


song for orphans

by janie_tangerine



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: (I mean geralt goes to the peterloo march SO), (yes it's a regency au yes I based it on a springsteen song that's my thing), Alternate Universe - Regency, Anal Fingering, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bondage, Bottom Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Bruce Springsteen References, Canon-Typical Violence, Dom/sub Undertones, Emotionally Constipated Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Femdom, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Abandonment Issues, I Don't Even Know, Musicians, Non-Linear Narrative, Oral Sex, Past Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Pegging, Political Campaigns, Porn with Feelings, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Poverty, Praise Kink, The Author Regrets Nothing, Woman on Top, essi daven deserved better so I'm just going for it, jaskier ships it but i mean he did in book canon didn't he, regency femdom event 2020, this went completely off the rails but do I regret it certainly no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-26
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:47:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27209125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: “For that matter,” she says, “I think your eyes are quite fetching, if I may say so.”“... Excuse me?”“They’re… unique, really. I never saw such a shade, and they look golden half of the time. I don’t see why anyone would ever find them a reason to shun you.”“... Thank you,” he stammers after, not knowing what else he could tell her, not when his stomach is turning upside down because no one ever told him they were a nice color, Yen didn’t mind them and never said she didn’t like them but she also never said she did -“I was just telling the truth,” she winks, and then she stands and heads for the counter.Geralt drinks the rest of his beer at once.His fingers are shaking when he places the pint back on the table.
Relationships: Essi Daven & Jaskier | Dandelion, Essi Daven/Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 12
Kudos: 39
Collections: Banned Together Bingo 2020, Regency Femdom Week 2020





	song for orphans

**Author's Note:**

> ... *breathes out* HELLO everyone and welcome to the part where I drop this monster that happened for the regency femdom event but couldn't finish in time because it quite damned literally ran away from me and where I put on my clown hat and say that _this_ is my #1 het ship for this fandom and that I've been down in the gutter since I finished book two earlier this year and I Never Got Over Essi and I was trying to see if there was a way I could write something for them for this event, then I did some quick math about what happened when it came to political rallies at the time, realized that I could do the au about how not-really-rich-people-were-faring and throw them in it AND THIS HAPPENED IDEK HAVE SOME 25K OF NONLINEAR DOOMED HET SHIP tha is not doomed in this context because fuck that I want them to be happy. /o\
> 
> in more specifics/extra warnings: this entire thing is built around the [peterloo massacre](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peterloo_Massacre) in 1819 and the entire first section is Geralt going there so if violence/that setting throws you off or is something you might want to skip on you can skim/move on to the second. also, I tagged every canon but the game because while essi (for obv reasons) and geralt's characterizations are more book canon than anything (geralt might have a smidge of show too but as essi wasn't in the show...) jaskier's more show canon than else and I kind of mixed everything in so hopefully it works out.
> 
> also: the title, the paragraph titles (plus as you can see parts of the song essi writes) are from bruce springsteen's _song for orphans_ which was absolutely not concerning regency BUT I was locked down with it for the last two weeks because I realized it fit the mood I wanted for this splendidly and it would probably work well if you wanted to listen to it while reading it ([studio version newly released](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib96-ytmLDg) and [acoustic live version](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATM2S2dytPc)). also many thanks to totemundtabu for betaing this *and* the invaluable help when it came to a bunch of historical details - also I'm using this for my 'kiny sex' square on by banned together bingo card. other than that, I own absolutely zilch and... yeah. I'M GOING AWAY AND LEAVING THIS HERE FOR WHOEVER ELSE CRIED ABOUT ESSI AS MUCH AS I DID *saunters back downwards*

**well the multitude assembled and tried to make the noise**

_These bloody clothes still fit me, don’t they?_

That’s probably not what Geralt should be thinking as he walks towards St. Peter’s field, not quite looking at anyone nearby.

Except that he can’t stop doing that, not since he put them on this morning. White trousers, red jacket, black boots, the same he wore at Waterloo, and he still has the fucking scar under his eye for everyone to see as proof, never mind the shrapnel ones on his stomach and back that _no one_ actually does see, and the fact that he hasn’t been able to sleep straight for most nights since _then_ , and - _that_? No one sees it. Sure as bloody fucking hell _not,_ and he wishes that was the worst he had to deal with.

He had thought to just fuck it and come dressed as usual, but - they did insist on everyone showing up dressing their best, and he doesn’t really believe it, but _maybe_ showing these rich assholes that _some_ people who helped them win against Napoleon and who did _not_ care for doing it in the first place at all are starving too… well, no, they _wouldn’t_ care, but he had to give it to Jaskier, it _would_ have looked bad on them from the outside if they _showed_ they didn’t, _so_.

So he wore the damned clothing and he’s pulled up his hair so it doesn’t cover his face, and patience if people around him stare.

He’s adjusted to that, anyway. He’s been adjusted to it since he can remember.

He walks forward, trying to _not_ think about anything that’s not standing here to show the rich assholes in the Parliament that people like _him_ matter, too. It doesn’t _really_ work - the jacket is larger on him than it was four years ago. Of course it was. He had food regularly, in the army. Only good thing anyone could say for it, really.

As if anyone with even a bit of power in this dumb country ever gave a fuck about people like him anyway.

He walks forward, wishing he could have brought Roach with. Hell, he wishes he could have gone with Jaskier, but he’s with the press, of course, so it wasn’t an option. He wishes _she_ -

Never mind _that_.

He shakes his head and walks forward and tries to think of nothing until he can’t walk anymore and the square is brimming with people.

It’s… nice, he thinks, regardless of everything. It won’t change shit and it won’t make the lords in London consider them human beings with rights, but it’s… not bad to be surrounded by people dressed in their best clothing, no weapons, women and children everywhere, actually _smiling_ under the sun. Considering how the weather is never this clement if not a few days per year… could it be that maybe - fate is somehow smiling down on them?

( _Not God. If he ever believed in one, he was done since -_ since _\- since Vesemir found him crying his eyes out on the door of this blacksmith shop twenty-four years ago, give or take._ )

He sighs, stands. A few children stare and point at his hair. Their mothers shush them and look the other way.

 _Oh, it’s not new. I’ve been there since always_ , he doesn’t say.

Oh, how he wishes they wouldn’t. He actually _likes_ children, when they let him get close.

He shakes his head and tries to pay attention to his surroundings. No one is speaking yet, but the breeze feels _nice_ , and the sun is shining in a cloudless sky, eyes as blue as -

He’s _not_ even going there. He’s _not_. His jacket fits, but it feels too large all over again. The trousers, too - he had to make a hole in the belt he hadn’t used since then. The boots do, because they’re not _trash_ , and he hasn’t sold them for decent bread just because he knows that if he does he’ll never get good ones again.

The sun is still shining.

He dares hope that maybe this won’t end badly. Everyone around him is smiling, in their nice clean Sunday clothes, all the women wearing white. _He_ doesn’t even have Sunday clothes, now that he thinks about it. He wonders what color is -

Fuck. He told himself it was a horrible idea more than once. She’s out of his damned league and he had enough proof it was a bad idea with Yen, who is in America now and will never be back and maybe did the right thing for herself, but -

People around him cheer. Henry Hunt is up on the stage now, along with other people he can’t quite distinguish, but it doesn’t matter - he can recognize the voices. He’s heard most of them, in meetings or taverns. He breathes in the warm summer air, _almost_ smiling as he can’t help thinking all over again that the sky really is a pretty shade of blue today, and oh, if only he had a livelihood and he wasn’t headed for starvation half of the year along with the few people he _could_ call his family even if none of them are his blood maybe he could -

He could -

Someone screams.

He goes still, hand immediately reaching for a sword he doesn’t have just before he hears horses galloping and he turns to look and he sees soldiers galloping _all over them_ , what, _why_ , no one is armed here, they said they shouldn’t, it wasn’t supposed to be violent, it _wasn’t_ -

He ducks and moves to the side, running on pure instinct as he hears cannons that he knows aren’t there just before he throws himself on the ground and the soldier on the horse nearby jumps all over him and -

And _his hooves crack right over a child that slipped out of someone’s grasp_ , and before he can try and do anything about it the sky is dusty and everyone is screaming and he’s trying to run but another soldier has drawn a sword out and is riding towards him, and he only manages to not get cut down because his body is acting all on his own, and he remembers Waterloo even too well, it’s burned behind his eyelids and into his bones as he barely feels that sword cutting through his arm and his jacket

( _it’s covered in blood now, red over red, someone once told him it wasn’t his color and he had to laugh_ )

and he crashes on his knees with dust flying all around him just in time to see a woman in front of him right in the way of another soldier, and he gets to his feet and throws himself on her _and_ the baby she was holding and as they crash on the other side of the soldier he the horse kicks him in the back and it flares in pain, and both woman and baby are screaming and aren’t even _seeing_ him and he has to get off them before he feels vomit rising up in his mouth, _fuckfuckfuck_ he needs to be out of here, what did they do, _what did they do_ , he can smell blood, he can smell _death_ and he can’t even fight back, what has he worn this stupid uniform for, they _didn’t care_ , they never cared, _did they_ -

He needs to leave.

He needs to _leave_ but the shop is too far away and they had told him to not go and that it was useless and that he was better off staying and pulling his weight, and he didn’t, and he can’t even _begin_ to think about finding the way back, and sure as hell he won’t find shelter at Nivellen’s because _he_ also said he’d be here, and if Jaskier’s lucky he’s been arrested and he wasn’t in the rubble, and he’s the only one with the keys to the printer’s, so -

Oh.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, _Essi lives nearby, doesn’t she,_ and he never quite forgot where even if he had _tried_ to, and he shouldn’t he shouldn’t he _shouldn’t_ , but -

Someone else screams nearby.

He runs.

**but time's grew thin and the axis grew somehow incomplete**

“You, my friend,” Jaskier says, “ _really_ need to come to terms with the fact that your fair lady has sailed _months_ ago and you need to get over her.”

“I _am_ over her,” Geralt replies, staring down into his ale and not meaning a single word.

Jaskier looks at him with the face of someone who knows him too well to be fooled.

“You are certainly _not_ ,” he replies, “and while I am hardly one to judge my friends on their dalliances, let me tell you, that wasn’t any good for you at the end of it and I can see it because you got even thinner and it’s not a good look on you.”

Geralt wishes he _could_ just tell him to shut it.

Fact is, he can’t, because he’s right, and he still hasn’t quite figured out _why_ a former viscount fallen out with his family who makes a living printing pamphlets, writing poetry that no one accepts to publish because it’s _too obscene_ or _too radical_ and occasionally singing for Nivellen decided that _he_ was a person he should befriend just after he came back here from Waterloo and just wanted to drown in ale until he forgot about it, but fact is, he _did_ , and he knows him enough to know Geralt is full of shit, _and_ he also was there for - the months in which he had dared hoping he and Yennefer had one chance in hell to not be doomed.

Turns out, Geralt had been the idiot to assume that all along.

“And what if I am not?” He says, not wanting to antagonize him.

“You need to distract yourself,” Jaskier says, “which means that if you stay another half hour you _could_ , because a friend of mine is singing this evening, and you always leave before things get fun around here.”

“I stay for the important ones,” he mumbles, and it’s not like he has time to waste. If _he’_ s not at work first thing tomorrow -

“Please,” Jaskier interrupts him, “Essi is _good_ and she likes all those sad songs _you_ like.”

“Nothing wrong with sad songs.”

“Nothing wrong with something _happy_ in your life once in a while. So, will you just stay and hear her out?”

Geralt shrugs, figuring that losing an hour of sleep wouldn’t have changed shit eventually, and stays.

The sun has just come down when a woman walks into the tavern, lute in hand, and goes straight to Nivellen’s. Jaskier smirks, saying he’ll go greet her later, she never likes it before performing, and Geralt just waits for her to take the usual chair near the counter where singers usually stay, and -

When she does, after taking off her cloak, he can’t help _staring_ at her - he hadn’t been wrong when he thought before that she was a bit shorter than Jaskier, but he hadn’t seen her pretty blonde hair covering half of her face, nor her blue, bright eyes - he can only see one properly, the other is under that curtain of golden strands. Her dress is the same blue as her eyes, and when she parts her soft lips to sing a slow, sad rendition of _Rosemary Lane_ , her hands moving swiftly on the lute -

Oh.

 _Yes_ , he thinks, _she’s good_ , a lovely voice that sounds like balm to his ears as she sings about the beginning of the maid’s misery as she glances around the room - she winks Jaskier’s way just after the first stanza, but that makes sense, they _do_ know each other, don’t they, but then her one eye meets his just as she opens her mouth to sing, _now this maid being young and foolish she thought it no harm, for to lie into bed to keep herself warm, and what was done there I will never disclose, but I wish that short night had been seven long years_ , and she’s _looking straight at him as she does_.

Geralt feels his throat go dry.

He doesn’t take another drink.

**where instead of child lions we had aging sheep**

“This is a bad idea,” Vesemir tells him as he puts on the red jacket, brushing dust off it.

“Well,” Geralt replies, “it might be, but _someone_ has to make the fucking point and it’s not as if we’re doing any better _without_ protesting.”

The old man glares at him, and Geralt wishes the stare didn’t feel so _judging_ , but - well. He does understand him. He _really_ does. He also owes him his life, and he’s entirely aware of it, but it still doesn’t mean he’s not going.

“Oh, because the likes of _us_ protesting with lords will bring us anywhere.” He shakes his head. “Geralt, I have a _bad_ feeling about it and you’re the only one around here who can pull _all_ of his weight. I know that poet friend of yours is very good at convincing people of whichever cause he’s championing, but if I were you I would _not_ go.”

He sighs again, shaking his head. “Jaskier has shit to do with this and you know it. And _not_ doing anything won’t make us _not_ starve, nor the horses, and maybe showing up like _this_ can’t hurt. I’m going.”

“You know you’ve stopped caring about whether you live or die since -”

“Will you _all_ stop presuming that since _she_ left I’m trying to get myself killed? I survived a damned war, I can survive a fucking march.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Vesemir sighs, “I just don’t know _how_ you will and if anything happens to you -”

“We’re going to fucking starve to death anyway and you know it. I’m going,” he says, and doesn’t bother closing the door on his way out.

Fucking hell, he _hates_ it.

He doesn’t want to argue with Vesemir, he doesn’t want to create problems, he _knows_ that out of the four of them he’s the only one who can handle things and run the shop on his own if he has to - Vesemir is _old_ by now, Eskel could except that anyone passing by moves past the shop _fast_ when they see how the shrapnel in Waterloo hit his _face_ and they tried sending him around to do business and it always ended up being a bad idea even if there’s nothing else wrong with him, and Lambert can’t sleep at night _worse_ than him and Eskel put together and it hasn’t gotten better since he came back, too, so he _gets it_ , he does, but -

But he also cannot just _never_ leave the place except for the occasional Sunday out or to get a drink in the evening and see _someone_ that’s not the three of them all the time, and he can’t just… _stay here_ and do nothing when people are trying to make a point and _be seen_.

Also, what could go wrong? Honestly, it would just be plain _idiotic_ to just not let them march.

He’ll - he’ll make his apologies in the evening.

He walks on towards St. Peter’s.

**so break me now as Old Faithful breaks the day**

“Please,” he had blurted, “can I - can I come in?”

Essi had opened the door at once, that dark blue dress of hers looking the same shade as that pretty sky as she gasped and let him in, asking _what in the bloody hell happened to you_ , and he could just say nothing as he crashed on one of her kitchen seats, and he still hasn’t said nothing since then, just standing still, blood falling from the wound in his arm.

She had disappeared after he sat down, but now she’s back with what looks like a bucket full of warm water, a rag and - needle and thread?

“Off with that shirt,” she says, and he can’t help thinking that he likes that her fingers are rough, with callouses covering the tips all over, even if her fingers are soft and slender. But it’s good. It’s _good_ , and she smells like verbena and not lilacs, and it shouldn’t get to his head to this point because he knows she’s only doing this out of decency and because they’re, well, _friendly_ , they’ve been since Jaskier introduced them that night, and it’s already a miracle she hasn’t turned her head the moment she looked at him as most women tend to do -

“What the _hell_ ,” she says, “is this?”

He shrugs.

“I was at the march.”

“I know _that_. What _the hell_ happened, that’s what I’d like to know,” she says as she cleans blood off his arm, and he wishes he met her before he got shrapnel in his stomach, which she’s most likely going to notice the moment she’s done with _that_.

“They called the army on us,” he grits through his teeth. “Should’ve figured that out.”

She shakes her head, hair brushing against his skin, feeling so _soft_ Geralt has to shudder.

“That’s -” She shakes her head. “I don’t think I have words. You weren’t even armed!”

“How do you know _that_?”

“Oh, I’m only friends with Jaskier _and_ you _and_ I perform in that tavern most of my time, surely I would not know the plans. _Please_ ,” she says, putting thread through the needle and starting to stitch his now cleaned wound.

Her fingertips are rough.

He never wants them to move from his arm.

“This is _deep_ ,” she says, shaking her head.

“Got worse in the war,” he shrugs. “Though at least in the war you _knew_ people were after you.”

“Doesn’t make it any better,” Essi goes on, the needle easily fixing the wound up.

“... You’re good at that,” he says as it reaches the end of it.

“My trade is in taverns,” she half-smiles. “All of us have to learn it at some point. Here,” she says, tying the knot on the thread, “it should hold.”

He nods. “Thank you,” he says, “I guess I should -”

“You haven’t seen the bruise on your damned back, Geralt Rivia,” she interrupts him, “you’re not going _anywhere_ and your - father, mentor, whatever he is to you, can handle it for once.”

“He did say I shouldn’t have gone -”

“And I can see you both care for each other, but I think you need to lie down and I have a bed.”

He stops dead in his tracks, looking down at her blue eyes, which are _uttermost fucking serious_.

“You aren’t - offering _me_ your bed,” he whispers.

“I _am_ ,” she says, “and you need it.”

“It’s not proper -” He starts, unable to stop even if being in her bed right now seems to be _exactly_ the one thing he wants, or maybe not _the one_ but certainly very much so.

Essi _laughs_ , sounding almost delighted by that interruption, before she takes his arm and drags him towards the first room in front of the kitchen where she fixed his arm.

“I _sing ballads in taverns for a living_ , Geralt. I also compose them, but that’s not quite the point. Do you think I have given a single effing damn about _property_ since I was old enough to understand this was the life I wanted?”

Put like that, he supposes she’s right. No woman who wants _that_ life and has it actually would care. And yet -

“You shouldn’t,” he says, “it’s _your_ bed, I do not belong -”

All breath leaves his lungs as she shakes her head, puts her hands on his shoulders and just _pushes_ him down on the bed, making sure he sits - now she’s looming over him, in that pretty blue dress, and he’s shirtless and without his shoes on and she can see the shrapnel in his stomach and how _thin_ he has gotten lately and why the jacket didn’t fit him, and then one of her hands is in his hair, running through it so very softly, eyes staring into his as if she doesn’t find the color revolting as most other people do -

“Do you remember,” she says, “that first evening when we met?”

He nods, all speech having left his throat.

“Do you think,” she says, “I hadn’t taken a good look at the entire tavern first?”

“I - suppose you would,” he admits, “but -”

“And do you think that I would have looked straight at you while singing _those_ lines in _that_ song out of no reason?”

He gasps, remembering them at once. They’re etched in his brain, after all, but -

“That was to say,” she smiles, a bit tentatively but still looking down at him, and oh hell she _knows_ who came before her, _he_ told her something, _Jaskier_ certainly told her more but they’re friends, why wouldn’t he, and all he can smell is verbena and it’s clearing out the smell of blood from before, “that if you think you do _not_ belong in my bed - well, you don’t have to _belong_ in it, but you’re wrong. I might quite like that plan, all in all.”

“You _wouldn’t_ ,” he breathes, knowing his hands are shaking.

“Oh,” she says, “I _would_ , and I thought I made that clear.”

“Since - since _then_?” He replies, quite unable to wrap his head around it because there is just no way she saw _him_ and thought -

“Since the moment I laid my eyes on you, I think, and I should like to correct your very much wrong assumption, if -”

Essi never finishes that sentence because he can’t - he reaches up with the hand not attached to a stitched arm and puts it behind her neck and drags it _down_ , and when his lips meet hers he feels like fainting - her mouth is smaller than the last one he kissed, but her tongue is hot and wet as it crashes against his and her fingertips are rough and _careful_ as they run through his dirty hair, undoing the ponytail and letting them fall around her hands as she drags his head _forward_ , her knees going around his thighs as she moves into his lap on the bed, her hands moving back to his face after, almost cradling it as they kiss, and maybe it’s that he can only smell verbena everywhere but he thinks he can taste it in his mouth too and he wants it to fill up his throat until it’s everything he can smell and taste - no blood, no dust, no memories of lilacs, and her breasts are pressing up against his chest as she moans into his mouth and gasps in delight when he grabs her waist and pulls her _closer_.

“Fuck,” he blurts when they part, “ _fuck_ , you - you want this, you _want_ -”

“I guess I should have been a bit more forward,” she breathes against his mouth, “and _yes_ , I do,” and then she’s pushed him _down_ , back on the mattress, hands running over his chest, and it might be too thin and too scarred but she doesn’t seem to mind as she leans down and trails kisses along it, and then she’s moved back up and kissed his mouth as she raises up her skirt and takes off her smallclothes, and she’s smiling as she looks down at him and motions for him to lay back with his head on the pillow, moving _forward_ -

He doesn’t even let a moment pass - the moment she leans down, sitting on his face, her cunt right over his mouth, he buries his face inside it, tongue twirling around the soft, _wet_ flesh inside her thighs, the smell overcoming him in the best way as he feels her thighs clench around his face, and suddenly he doesn’t even feel pain in his back anymore nor in his arm, not when she’s running her fingers into his hair and _pushing_ his face in deeper and moaning his name in that pretty, _pretty_ voice of hers as his tongue circles her clit and then moves inside her _again_ for he doesn’t even know how long until she’s sobbing his name as she spills all over his face. He groans, drinking it up, his tongue licking her clean until she stands and moves back, and he groans again as she sits on his chest, smearing it with her spend.

“You - you _do_ want this, don’t you,” she asks then, hand grasping Geralt’s hip, those rough fingertips pressing into his side.

“Yes,” he whines, not caring how it sounds, “but I thought there was no way _you_ would -”

“Oh,” she says, “I _would_ ,” and then she’s taking off his old belt and those trousers that really don’t fit him anymore, and her slender, strong fingers are wrapped around his cock and she’s stroking him fast and hard as she moves back up with her head next to his, and he keens when she does, realizing that he hadn’t feel _good_ like this in - in months, _fuck_ , he can’t remember the last time he did, and she’s kissing him again as she keeps on stroking him, and _then_ she grabs his hand and moves it in between her legs and he gasps when he feels how _wet_ she is, and then she’s stopped jerking him off but she’s moved over him and _on_ him and she just sank on his cock and he wants to scream and so maybe he does, not that she tells him to be quiet so _why should he_ -

She’s all warm and wet and _tight_ around him as her legs clench around him and her hand reaches back down and grabs the back of his head and pulls him forward, kissing him _again_ , taking one of his wrist and putting his hand on her breast, and _god_ it fills his palm completely, overflowing a bit, and she moans when he lets his fingers squeeze it a bit, and _fuck_ he’s not -

“I can’t -” he says, “I won’t last -”

“No one said,” she breathes back, “that it was a one time only thing and we can’t do it _again_ ,” and - he’s coming inside her at _that_ , unable to keep it in, and _fuck_ he’s - it feels so _good_ he can’t even _think_ , he had thought he had forgotten how it felt and he had given up on feeling it again with someone he actually _wanted_ , and then she goes still and her legs clench closer and she _screams_ his name as she grasps on to his shoulders and he can’t think anymore, he doesn’t even want to, and when she pulls out and swears under her breath and moves over and sits on his face he immediately moans against her cunt again before putting his mouth on it, his tongue licking her clean as she moans and screams his name above him, and he can barely feel any pain at all by now as he presses his head in deeper and lets his tongue run over her cunt hoping that she comes on his face again soon, and when she does not long later, fingers running through his hair and telling him she’s _this_ close just before she peaks, long and _hard_ and right over his face and mouth, he just knows that if she really meant it before, if she _wants_ him to belong in her bed -

Maybe he might really never leave it.

He certainly won’t _right now_ , and he won’t for a very, very long time.

**the axis needs a stronger arm, do you feel your muscles play**

“Let me guess,” Essi says as she opens the door for him, “it went badly.”

“Had my damned hide,” he admits, “not that he didn’t have his reasons.”

“You were trying to do the right thing, you know,” she says, locking back the door, staring back up at him with a certain _understanding_ that makes him feel out of place - only Jaskier’s ever looked at him like _that_ , and there wasn’t - well. There _wasn’t_.

“Story of my life,” he sighs, “and maybe I should learn to stop trying to. Never ends up well for me.”

She says nothing, her pale visible blonde eyebrow raising upwards just a notch, looking like she’s listening but not entirely convinced.

“Never mind that,” he shakes his head as he sits down on the small couch in the room she uses to compose, not wanting to get into _that_. Fucking hell, he thinks he just doesn’t want to _think_ at all. “He had my hide, I took it in stride, my back is still hurting, work is still shit, money is still shit, it wasn’t worth it, end of story.”

“It doesn’t quite sound like it,” Essi presses, “but I’ll leave it because I can hear you don’t want to discuss it.” She moves closer, a slender hand pressing against his cheek, and he leans into it, not even trying _not_ to, sighing as her rough fingertips scratch at its back lightly. Fuck, she’s so _gentle_ and he’s so weak, and he doesn’t know what she sees in him _but_ -

“I don’t,” he admits, his voice thinner than he’d like for it to be.

“Then what do you want?” She asks, and he has to laugh, he has to _laugh_ because -

“I don’t think - no one has ever asked me _that_. Not… like this.”

“Too bad, but that doesn’t change that _I_ did ask. What do you want?”

He wishes it wasn’t the hardest question anyone could ask him. Jaskier tried once, wanting to get out of him _what might please him_ and not _what he had to_ , and it was the one time they had a fight in four years. He never quite worked that out either. But he doesn’t feel like _not_ answering it now, it’s just -

It’s _just_ -

“I never dared think about it,” he admits, and then her mouth is on his, softly but _firmly_ -

“Do you want _this_?” She asks.

“Yes,” he replies, sighing as verbena fills his nostrils all over again and he _relishes_ in it.

Her legs go around his waist, her hands cupping his face, and then she _grinds_ on him, and he groans as her crotch presses against his cock through her dress and his trousers, and he wants, fuck he _wants_ but -

“And do you want _this_?” She presses, grinding against him again, her hands pushing his wrists against the couch, and he sighs into it, thinking that _yesyesyes_ he wants her to push him against it and keep him there and never let go except he doesn’t know how to _say_ it because he hasn’t managed to conceive that he actually _can_ ask for such a thing in a very long time and the only time he came close to it was - well, he doesn’t want to think about it _now_ and so he won’t, and so he moans and nods again and hopes she gets it even if he doesn’t _say_ it -

She looks down at him, that blue eye staring into his, and then she moves hair away from the other side of her face, _both_ eyes staring down at him -

She grabs one of his wrists, pulls it forward, under her smallclothes, _pushing_ his fingers right there where she’s wet and scorching hot, and -

“Go ahead,” she says, “ _do it_ ,” and he’s sure his fingers tremble as he presses them inside her - how does she want _his fingers_ there, they’re rough and they’ve handled more blood and soot than anyone might want to and yet she doesn’t seem to care, not as he rubs his thumb against her clit before sliding two more inside her, and she _keens_ above him, pretty verses saying _yes_ and _oh_ and _more_ falling from her mouth, and maybe it’s ridiculous but to his ears she’s singing now regardless as she keeps on saying his name over and over and maybe he should tell her he likes how she says it, but the words get stuck in his throat like they’ve done since the last time they didn’t and he wished he never spoke them, and he pushes his fingers in _deeper_ until she’s clenching around them, fingers grasping at his shoulders as she spills on his hand, and when he moves it away it’s coated in her spend, and he keeps his eyes on hers as he slowly, slowly raises it up and licks it clean, wondering if she’ll hate it, if -

Her eyes are a darker shade of blue, he thinks, as she stares _right_ into his own, and she’s biting down on her lower lip, her throat working up and down and her lips slightly smiling.

“Don’t move,” she says, and he doesn’t as she pulls down his trousers and sinks down on him _again_ , his cock disappearing inside her as she goes _down_ slow, until she’s taken all of him and she’s rolling her hips up and down and he’s still not moving until she tells him he can fuck her but going along with her pace and he _does_ , not moving otherwise as much as he can, and he moans into her mouth when her lips crash against his and she holds on to his neck and then blurts into his mouth to just _come inside her already_ -

He sobs as he does, keeping his hands still before she reaches down and grabs them and puts them around her waist, and then -

“You feel _so good_ ,” she blurts, and he _arches_ for a moment, almost violently for how that shook him, and he hadn’t know it would make his blood boil like this, he _hadn’t_ , and yet -

Her hair falls over his cheeks as her hands reach down and cup them and she kisses him again, and when she whispers, _so did you like it_ , he can only nod, his throat too dry to talk, and when she says _well, so did I_ , he feels his chest swell with relief, and -

“Will you come back home with me tomorrow? After I sing?” She asks, and oh, right, she should perform at the inn, and he should be home just as soon as she’s finished, but -

 _But_ -

“Yes,” he says, because he _wants_ it and just maybe he can do what he _wants_ for once.

“Good,” she smiles, and his blood boils again as she says it, and he wishes he knew why but that doesn’t matter now, not when she’s kissing him into the cheap but soft cushions and he drops his head against her breasts, her hands running through his hair all over again.

He can only smell verbena right now.

He thinks he doesn’t want to smell anything else for a very, very long time.

**from house to house I see her giving last kisses and wishing well**

“She said _what_?” Jaskier asks, and to his credit, he _sounds_ outraged on his behalf.

That feels… well.

It doesn’t fix anything, not at all, but it makes him feel somehow vindicated, which is more than he could say for himself a moment ago.

“She’s going to the bloody colonies,” Geralt repeats, wishing the words didn’t _hurt_ on their way out, “and she wanted a _clean break_ , and I had no say in it, she’s leaving tomorrow and I’m not invited to see her out.”

Jaskier’s eyes go even wider as his mouth opens before he takes another drink from his pint. “But _why_? It - I mean, she’s bloody fucking terrifying and I don’t know how you two found an understanding or whatever, but - it seemed like you were happy?”

He snorts.

Oh, _it seemed_.

He drinks the whole of his pint at once, and it _still_ doesn’t do anything to make him feel any better. He always knew she was out of his league and that it was a pipe dream that it might work out, since when do well-doing apothecaries with a business that serves the entire northern side of town even look the way of someone like _him_ and since when does that _work out_ , anyway? He had gone there to get laudanum a year or so ago, when he _really_ couldn’t sleep and Lambert couldn’t either and he had a bit of money to spare, and it had - somehow worked out, her violet eyes making contact with his as he smelled lilac and gooseberries and it had felt intoxicating in the _good_ way, and she didn’t seem to care that he was - that he had almost nothing to his name, not even _his own_ because he never quite knew it, that he didn’t know a trade outside blacksmithing or that his hair and eyes make everyone _stare_ same as they did when he was a child.

She _had_ told him from the get-go she didn’t want a marriage, and he had been fine with that, he had nothing to offer in that sense and _she_ was the one with money in between the two of them, money that she made all on her own and he _did_ admire her for it, he _did_ , but -

 _I want children_ , she had said a few months into it, and he hadn’t… _not_ wanted them either, as much as something coiled in his stomach at the thought, because how could _he_ presume to raise any when his own mother had been what she had been and when it comes to fathers, well, he never knew any bar Vesemir and they _care_ for each other but he doesn’t know if that’s _it_ , but still, he had agreed to it, letting himself believe that maybe he could -

He had presumed to think that he _could_ have it, and he could learn along the way, and maybe for once it wasn’t a picture so out of his reach as much as he always thought it was, and then they _tried_ and Yen’s monthly blood _kept on coming_ when they tried every other day, and _then_ -

Then he realized that - well. He _had_ fooled around with a few people before going to war, mostly girls who bet in between them that they’d have the guts to fool around with him, because their mothers warned them off him a long time ago, and _none_ of them ever was with child after. They _did_ have a fair amount of camp followers and whores coming with during the war, and he had bedded a fair amount of those, too, needing to _not think about anything else_ , and - fair enough, whores do know how to _not_ get with child, but still… he bedded _a lot_ of them and none of them were with child after either, or if they ever were it was after they bedded _someone else_ long after him. And there were those years just before he turned ten when the shop was doing _badly_ and he had picked up more work in a nearby mine for a year, and most of the older men working there had lung sickness and some of them complained in between them about feeling like they couldn’t even bed their wives anymore for how _tired_ they were -

 _Oh_ , he had thought, _it’s me, isn’t it_ , and he had told Yennefer because she deserved to know, he couldn’t _not_ tell her if she wanted children that much and he couldn’t be the person for it, and the moment he told he _knew_ it was bound to end.

He just hadn’t thought it would end with Yennefer telling him she was moving to Boston and giving him a last, lingering kiss before telling him it was the last time they’d see each other, and he had come to the inn with darkness coiling in his stomach, berating himself for even thinking it could go anywhere.

He tells Jaskier the… short, _short_ version. He can’t possibly say all of that _again_.

Jaskier doesn’t look any less angry. He wishes that didn’t make him feel just slightly better, because it also feels pathetic, _but still_ -

“You know,” Jaskier says, slowly, “that says nothing about _you_ , right?”

“Please,” Geralt shakes his head. “It says _all_ about me. I couldn’t even give her _that_ , how could I even think -”

“And so what? Bloody hell, no man’s worth isn’t attached to _that_ and the world is full of women who’d rather not have children. So she did, so she wasn’t right for you, _whatever_ , that doesn’t mean your life is worthless.”

Sounds nice.

If only he _felt_ like that.

He says nothing and drinks his pint.

Jaskier takes a look at him and orders another and for once he says nothing else, and Geralt is just thankful _someone_ doesn’t seem to think any less of him. He doesn’t ask how he knows the world is full of women who don’t want children - it seems to be the only category of women he continuously dallies with, _he_ would know. Geralt never was much for dalliances himself, he just - he _did_ when there was no other option but the hope he might find _one_ woman who’d just stay and have _him_ never quite died and he just wishes he had never rekindled it the way he had.

And yet he had.

He can still smell the lingering lilac and gooseberries in his memories as he drinks from his new pint.

He feels like crying, and yet he doesn’t - it’s been too long since he did it last and he’s not sure he even remembers how to do it.

**to every mystic hero that the kids might find a place**

“You _know_ that if you keep on like this you _will_ get guards outside the door,” Geralt says, leaning against the door of Jaskier’s printer shop.

Jaskier doesn’t raise his eyes from whatever it is he’s cooking up right now as he shakes his head.

“I _do_ , Geralt, but you know I’m not for subtlety. Also, I never made a mystery of what I print and no one has showed up until now, and I have a feeling that my not-so-illustrious father would rather let me do my business rather than have to deal with a relative being arrested, disgraced as he is and all, so… I think I’m good for the moment. Be a dear and tell me if this is readable?”

Geralt sighs and grabs the piece of paper Jaskier has just handed him - it’s advertising for the march at St. Peter’s, all nicely printed and written, with time and place, a warning that there are no weapons to be brought, and only a _liberty and fraternity_ printed at the end of it, in bold, black letters to make the point of _why_ they’re going.

“It is,” he says, “unless you want to use it to preach.”

“Oh, that’s for pamphlets. I should start right away on the one I wrote yesterday night, maybe there will be enough time to have it spread before Monday, after all -”

“You wrote _another_ in one night only?”

“I was inspired, what can I say. Honestly, I should go back to writing a few songs after, but you know. Right now needs must and they’re not the priority. Oh, Essi asked about you.”

Geralt stops dead in his tracks as he desperately tries to find somewhere to look at that’s not Jaskier’s _fairly_ knowing eyes. The stack of pamphlets to his left seems proper - he takes one in his hands, but his eyes can’t really focus even if he _can_ read something about elections and needing to reform in the title.

“Stop that,” Jaskier says, “it’s nowhere near as subtle as you think you are.”

“And why would _she_ ask after me?”

“She said you hadn’t dropped by the inn for a while and she was starting to get worried.”

Geralt thinks he’s not computing the fact that _she’s worried about him_. How -

“She - she was?”

He forces himself to look at Jaskier, whose mouth is pressed in a thin line. He looks as if he’s heavily pondering if he should tell Geralt something or not.

“She _was_ ,” he finally says, “and I said you were busy with work and that money was low and your brother was doing worse than usual, which is all true, and she said that if you ever wanted to catch up with her on your own time I should tell you where she lives because she was _indeed_ worried and wanted to talk to you about something that supposedly came up already once in between the two of you, and I am absolutely not going to prod any further but I can tell you that she’s not the kind of person who’d… give out her own address to just anyone or who would do it for the amusement of it. She lives on Oxford Road, the red house, it’s just her.”

“Jaskier, you know I’m not -”

“I’m just telling you what _she_ told me I should rely, and for what it’s worth, I’ve known her since we ended up against each other in this singing competition in London before the war and she always was _extremely_ forward when it came to tell any man who’d come around that _she_ wouldn’t bear him any children because she didn’t _want_ them.”

“ _Why_ are you telling me that now?” He asks, his voice trembling, wishing Jaskier just _hadn’t_ said it -

“I am,” he says, “because I can see the signs and I can see that you’ve been looking at her even if you like to tell yourself you aren’t, and she definitely has always known what she wanted or _who_ she wanted, and I don’t see why you should be miserable out of - whatever martyrdom syndrome you have going on. And I know _that_ might be a problem, so I’m just telling you first. Just, will you _think_ about visiting her if you can’t come in the evenings?”

“Maybe,” he concedes, already knowing he won’t, and yet -

And yet that sentence follows him outside the shop and into the dirty street leading home, and he’s not going there, and hell, wait, he _did_ tell her he couldn’t father children a while ago, didn’t he, and -

He stops, breathes.

He’s - he’s going to the march on Monday.

He’s _not_ going to visit until then.

 _Maybe_ he’ll think about it after, but there is no way it won’t go sour. Things always do. They have never _not_ since he can remember. No sense in presuming she’ll see something in him that _no one ever did_ and he’s pretty sure no one ever could because _it’s just not there._

**who get lost forever mothers and fathers on their weeks out in space**

“That’s not what we agreed on,” Geralt sighs as he counts the money the duke in front of him has just handed over - he doesn’t even remember the name, he just knows he’s a bloody one because he’s introduced himself as one and has done the same with about everyone else in the damned street before he left his mare with them, and Geralt only has negative opinions about how well he cared for her or for the state of her horseshoes. Honestly, if he could have afforded it, he _would_ have tried to haggle because it was more work than that payment warranted, but needs must and so he doesn’t do that… until instead of the five crowns they agreed on, he’s given three.

“Beg your pardon?” The man shoots back. Geralt thinks the name was Agl- _something_. He hopes he can forget it as soon as he leaves.

“We said five,” Geralt says, “these are _three_. Those shoes you had on her were _old_ , I had to do double the work on her than I’d do usually for such a thing, so if you will, _please_ do give me my amount.”

“We _never_ said five,” the duke says, looking at him like he would crush him under his heel if he could.

 _Well, fuck_.

“We _did_ ,” Geralt says, “and my brother over there heard -”

“Oh, as if anyone would take his word or yours over mine? Be glad I paid you that much,” the duke says, and then his eyes narrow, and, “and aren’t you Visenna’s son?”

“... And how would you _know_ that?” He hasn’t heard anyone mention his mother in years. He wishes it hadn’t changed.

“Oh, she treated a few girls I sent over here for _reasons_.”

Geralt breathes in. “Fine, and so what?”

“They came back saying she had a son with demon eyes or something. Looking at you, I can see why - it _just_ matches the description.”

“Sir, will you _kindly_ pay what I am owed?”

“Considering what she does for a living, I’m not surprised _that_ is what came out of her, not that she’s not good at it. And no, I did give you what you’re owed.”

He turns his back on Geralt and while his first instinct is pressing, he - he puts away his three crowns and keeps his mouth shut. It’s not worth it, and three crowns are better than nothing, are -

“You should just consider yourself lucky that he’s an entirely better man than you,” Essi’s voice says, and wait, _oh_ , he had told her that she could come over to see Roach this afternoon but he hadn’t seen her coming, and now she’s facing the duke in the middle of the street, wearing a cheaper version of the blue dress she uses to perform, golden hair still covering half of her face and looking at him as if she _would_ end him on the spot if she could.

“Beg your pardon, little lady? And who are you even?”

“I don’t think it matters to you. I just think that conning honest men out of money they earned is vile, and the fact that he has let you go just means he’s an entirely better person than you - most men would have just taken it by force. You should feel ashamed, my lord. Stealing money from a man who not only worked for you but also served in a war _you_ certainly haven’t fought in? Disgraceful, really.”

“And are _you_ going to do something about it or will you just keep on wasting my time?” The duke spits back.

“Just wait until both me and a friend of mine in the same trade find out who you are exactly and you might regret it. Unless you do pay him his due now.”

“You can forget it,” the duke spits, and turns his back on them.

“Too bad for him,” Essi says, moving up to the counter, “I suppose Jaskier and I will have a lot of fun in the next week.”

“Wait, _what_?” He can’t have understood right.

“Do you think that the moment I find out who was that arse we’re not going to write a few songs about him and make sure they’re played wherever he comes from?”

“You - you _don’t_ have to do that,” he replies, his throat tightening, not quite sure of what he was expecting but certainly not _this_ , and - he’s been over to her house more than once, they have - they _have_ spent the night together, but he’s not sure of what they are now, and he wouldn’t presume -

“Oh, but I would take great joy in it. So, are you going to introduce me to your horse _and_ your poor brother over there who has been just staring at us all along?”

“I didn’t want to ruin the moment,” Eskel says, grinning and moving closer as Geralt slips him the three crowns. “Oh, and I remember that idiot’s name.”

“Excellent,” Essi grins, “just tell me all about it later, won’t you?”

He _does_ , but before Geralt does bring her over to see Roach, and so what if he wonders, _could I bring her out to ride one day when I don’t have to stay behind that damned counter_?

It scares him, how much he wants that.

It _does_. And yet -

And yet he knows he does. Very much. Maybe he should tell her. He - he _will_.

He will next time he comes back to her place after she performs.

_Next time._

**well sons they search for fathers, but the fathers are all gone**

“You never stay for long,” Essi tells him as she takes a sip of her cheap whiskey, and Geralt - well. Geralt can only shrug, because it’s true, he always runs back to the shop not long after either she or Jaskier or _both_ are done playing for the evening, even if the inn stays open for a few hours after.

“It’s… work,” he finally says, staring down into his ale and unable to drink it.

“Oh,” she says, _understanding_ , “perchance do you sell anything at the local market? I can imagine why -”

He shakes his head. “No,” he says, “I - my… _father_ , for lack of a better word, I work with him, he… has a blacksmith’s shop and we have to be up early enough to try and intercept some business. I also look after our horses and others if people leave them to stable with us, which is… a side business that helps out, but it’s not that many.”

She nods, her lone blue eye staring into his. “ _For lack of a better word_? If I may ask. Sorry, us musicians can be… nosy.”

“It’s really nothing anyone would write songs about,” Geralt shrugs, “but I can tell you. It’s not… some kind of secret. Or anything.”

“Then I should like to hear it,” she says, and she sounds like she _means_ it, and so he opens his mouth, not quite knowing what will come out of it, and -

“My mother left me in front of his shop when I was six,” he blurts, and when she _doesn’t_ break eye contact nor starts looking at him _wrong_ , he breathes and goes on. “I - don’t really remember much, before. I remember that she - had a lot of people coming in and out of the house. And where we lived, no other children came by - they all said she was a witch or something of the kind. I found out later from Vesemir that she was… the one person in the area who’d, you know, take care of girls who didn’t want children.”

“I see,” she says, nodding, and she doesn’t stand or leave or look at him wrong _again_.

“Also - well. My eyes were apparently… a bad omen. Or something.” He shakes his head. “She wasn’t… _bad_ , I guess. I just… don’t really remember her much. And then someday she brought me along to the market, told me to wait on Vesemir’s doorstep while she went to get food and she never came back.”

“She _didn’t_? But - she didn’t tell you anything?” Essi asks, sounding… _shocked_? Maybe even outraged? He doesn’t want to suppose that, but -

“No. When he realized she wasn’t coming back he offered to bring me home, I had been waiting there for _hours_ , I led him back there and - everything was gone? Except some of my clothes. She didn’t even leave a message. So - well. He said that if I was willing to work he could take me in, he took another orphan in before and he took another after me, and what was I going to do? I was good with horses, at least. My _real_ father was never - I never even knew who he was. For that matter, that was - when the hair became like this. It just turned white and never quite changed back.”

He hadn’t known what to expect. Not her hand to cover his wrist in sympathy, but it _does_ and he realizes that her fingertips are rough even if her fingers are slender and her hand is much smaller than his.

“I’m - really sorry to hear it,” she says, and hell but she sounds like she _means_ it.

“Could have been worse,” he says, “he could have just told me to fend for myself. And at least there’s no risk _I_ might cause such a thing,” he adds, and then bites on his tongue because _why_ had that left his mouth, _why_ -

“You… do not want children?” She asks, not sounding like she would judge him either way.

He shrugs. “I cannot have them,” he says, not quite looking at her. “I - I don’t know if I’d want any, but I _can’t_ regardless. It might have been why… things went sour with the last woman… I loved, I suppose.”

“She… wanted them?”

“Very much,” he sighs. “It was not meant to be, I suppose. But I also do not know how I’d raise any, considering… everything, so maybe it was for the best. And as it is right now in between Vesemir and my… brothers, in the same way, I am the only one who can run things around the shop at all times, so that’s why I try to not be too late. Even if… it would be nice to stay, once in a while.”

“Maybe you could tonight? Jaskier and I are singing together, later.”

He’s tired. He should go. But he thinks he really, _really_ could do with staying, for once.

“Maybe I will,” he concedes. “It’s just, sometimes it’s _tiring_.”

“What is?” She asks, and she sounds like she _cares_. It’s probably the only reason why he bothers trying to explain it.

“Everything. I mean, it’s never been _easy_ , then the war made it worse, and now it seems like there’s never enough money to go on and I feel like I’ve never had a moment of respite since my mother disappeared. You know, how it is with candles? The lengths run out at some point, whether you blow them off or not? Something like that, except that I feel like mine was blown off more than once and I’m still here.”

“Actually, that was a _pretty damn good_ way to put it. And you keep on saying you’re terrible with words?”

“Just don’t tell Jaskier or I’ll never live it down. Feel free to use it for some song, if it’s that good,” he shrugs, figuring that _he_ certainly will not.”

“Maybe I will,” she says, smiling a tiny bit, squeezing his wrist before standing up to get her lute, but then she looks at him _again_.

“For that matter,” she says, “I think your eyes are quite fetching, if I may say so.”

“... Excuse me?”

“They’re… _unique_ , really. I never saw such a shade, and they look _golden_ half of the time. I don’t see why anyone would ever find them a reason to shun you.”

“... Thank you,” he stammers after, not knowing what else he could tell her, not when his stomach is turning upside down because _no one_ ever told him they were a nice color, Yen didn’t _mind_ them and never said she didn’t like them but she also never said she _did_ -

“I was just telling the truth,” she winks, and then she stands and heads for the counter.

Geralt drinks the rest of his beer at once.

His fingers are shaking when he places the pint back on the table.

**the lost souls search for saviors, but saviors don't last long**

The candle is halfway burned and Essi is still staring down at the empty piece of paper in front of her.

Which is honestly ridiculous, because it’s not like she doesn’t know what she wants to write on it.

She knows that. She’s known since Jaskier introduced her to Geralt, and _fuck him sideways_ for just having told her she was going to meet _his exceedingly handsome and broody friend_ instead of telling her that he was _that interesting a person_ first - it’s not like things like _handsome and broody_ ever were enough by themselves to make her interested in someone.

 _Geralt_ , though...

He’s _both_ those things, sure, though he doesn’t seem to think of himself as handsome, which… is strange, considering that he _is_ \- fine, maybe not in a _classic_ way, or not like the bothersome nobles she sometimes plays for when she needs money and she can’t find a faster way to gain it. But… he’s quite the _right_ height, not too tall nor too short, with that lean frame that still shows the muscles in his arms, appearing from under those worn-out clothes of his, that white hair is just unique and looks so _soft_ even if he works in a damned blacksmith’s (and doesn’t she want to touch it _so much_ ) and those eyes look positively _golden_ every time she meets them, and she’s halfway sure they would even in the light of the day, and he might have that scar under his eye but it’s quite a _lovely_ , nice face, and she would like to kiss those pale lips of his very, very much, and -

She _knows_ what Jaskier meant when he said he’s the kind of man you write songs about. He just has _that_ air to him that screams romance and heartbreak and adventure, and he’d most likely disagree, she’s talked to him enough to know, but.

 _But_.

Since they talked about his family, the idea _latched_ to her and wouldn’t let her go, and she doesn’t know if he’d even want it - she knows he’s shot Jaskier down every time _he_ suggested it.

But he doesn’t know about what _she_ wants to do now, does he, and would he have to until she’s finished?

She can just _hear_ it thinking about him, the words coming to her, the music fitting to them in a way it rarely happens when one composes, those _eyes_ of his so clear in front of her that they could be looking at her _now_ for all she knows.

Oh, to bloody hell with it. If he says he doesn’t want her to play it for an audience, then she won’t, but -

But she thinks she has to write it out.

Maybe if she sings it for him he _will_ get it, since he seemed completely oblivious to how she’s actually… _very much_ interested.

And she doesn’t want to think that the way he looked at her wasn’t just _courteous_ , but -

She shakes her head and dips her quill in ink, then starts writing.

**those nameless questless renegade brats who live their lives in song**

He hadn’t known what he had expected when Essi told him that she needed his opinion on a new composition and asked if he’d consider coming over with her again, and - in theory he’s already pushing it, he needs to be up at five in the morning every day these days, but he can feel in her voice that’s something important, and so Geralt had nodded, because after all he _has_ been at work at five in the morning regardless of whether he spent the night at her place or not and when he did he still felt more rested than when he didn’t, and said he would.

He had followed her home, and she had sat down and taken her lute after telling him to get comfortable on her worn-out but soft couch, and she had started playing, her fingers moving steadily along the neck of the instrument, and the moment she had started singing about men going off to war and coming back to nothing he had thought that maybe she wanted his opinion to see if it was realistic enough, same as Jaskier had back in the day, but then she had gone _farther_ , and then those men turned out not being just soldiers but _orphaned_ soldiers, and when her voice breaks a little as she sings about _sons searching for mothers that are all gone_ and _lost souls searching for saviors that don’t last long_ he almost stops her to ask, but it cannot be, it _cannot be that_ it’s about _him_ , and then she goes on talking about _nameless renegade men who live their lives in song_ and are gone with a goodnight whisper after running the length of a candle because no one cares for them either as she stares right into his eyes he _knows_ who it is about - because he _did_ tell her that once, didn’t he? He did, and that was the end of it but it was a _long_ song, and before _then_ she went on about the war _and_ the government leaving all of them behind, and by the time she’s done he feels like he’s going to _cry_ and -

“You didn’t want my opinion just because - you wanted it to sound realistic, did you?” He manages to ask when she puts the lute away.

“Not at all,” she says, half-smiling as her fingers grasp the cloth on her dress.

“That never - that’s not about _orphans_ in general, is it?” He asks - it was downright obvious that she only pretended it was about more than one person but it really was _not_.

“Not really,” she says, “and I never wanted it to be. I mean, yours seemed like a relatable experience, but no, it never was about anyone else.”

“When - when did you write it? If I can ask?” He whispers, feeling like words will fail him.

“Before the march,” she says, “and before I was too much of a coward to ask you here myself.”

 _Oh_.

“You are hardly a coward,” he says, because it’s easier than telling her _you’re wasting time writing songs about_ me _, I really am not the kind of person you should even put that effort into_ , “and - that was beautiful,” he says, feeling like it’s nowhere near enough, but _he_ is not the one out of the two of them who made a trade out of words.

“I’m - I’m glad you find it so,” she said, looking back at him again, moving her hair to the side so that both her eyes are staring into his, and he thinks he knows what she’s about to say, and he can feel the words burning at the back of his throat.

He _has_ to put it better, he _has_ to, but words seem to have failed him and he can’t believe she just went and did _that_ and kept it for this long -

He reaches out and grabs her hand.

***

Geralt’s fingers are shaking as he closes them around her wrist, those rough hands touching it so delicately, and then he’s looking straight at her and -

“I hadn’t thought - you wrote this _before_ the march?”

“Yes,” she says, “it just never seemed the right moment to tell you. And after - it didn’t either, but I _know_ what you asked the last time you went with me. You didn’t _say it_ out loud, but I heard it. And I couldn’t hold this back anymore.”

He nods, his grip becoming tighter.

“Essi, I -”

“Geralt, I love you,” she blurts, unable to keep it in anymore. “I _do_ , it would be foolish to pretend it was anything but _that_ , and I know - I know you might not, and that if the last woman you loved is still on your mind then I am not asking you for anything more than what we have already, but I can’t just go on and pretend I don’t.”

He closes his eyes a moment and when he looks back up at her they look a bit wet, his grip on her hand turning _stronger_ , and -

“She isn’t… still on my mind like _that_ ,” he says. “I think about her sometimes and I hope she’s doing well and that she’s found someone who can give her what I couldn’t, but I had time to deal with the fact that it wasn’t meant to be. I just didn’t think… _I_ could have it again. I barely could with her, honestly.”

Essi nods, her fingers curling around his. “You don’t have to say it back,” she says, and then he shakes his head again, as if he’s frustrated.

“It’s not _that_ ,” he says, “it’s that I only ever said it to one person and it went the way it did. What I know is that… while I was hearing that ballad.”

“Yes?”

“... I couldn’t describe how it felt either. I just - it was good, but I never - experienced _that_ before. Whatever it was.”

“You - would you consider maybe finding out then?” She asks, not even trying to keep the hopeful note out of her voice.

She doesn’t expect him to mutter something under his breath that sounds a lot like _to hell with it_ and to move from the sofa and go on his knees in front of her and bury his face against her thigh, moving in between her legs effortlessly, and when she tentatively reaches down and runs her fingers through his hair he sighs in _relief_ and then he says a _yes_ against the fabric of her dress that she only could hear because the entire room is so silent one might hear a pin drop.

She moves her other hand at the back of his neck and keeps on running her fingers through his hair as his hands clutch at her hips.

She thinks she won’t mind waiting for him to find out, and maybe that song won’t be performed until then unless he tells her she can do it, but it’s quite all right. She played it for the person it was meant for, after all.

**they run the length of a candle with a goodnight whisper then they're gone**

She should have just gone and told Geralt herself, Essi thinks, shaking her head as she puts away her quill. Not that Jaskier isn’t most likely enjoying the hell out of this entirre situation, she _knows_ he is, but she feels like she should have just found the guts to do it without the middleman… except that each single time she had tried lately words would just fail her, especially when the closer the march is the _broodier_ Geralt seems to become, when he’s even at the inn.

And he hasn’t come for a while, actually. She should have just asked Jaskier where his shop is and found him herself, but every time she thought about it she had a distinct feeling it would go sour, that he would just tell her that his latest heartbreak had been the nail in the coffin, because that’s what she assumed from the way he speaks about the lady, and -

It’s not that she couldn’t take it. She’s taken refusals of any kind in her life, that’s not _it_ , but something tells her she couldn’t handle a refusal from _him_ in the name of a woman she’s never even met or known, and she has to push down a feeling of relentless humiliation and shame filling her chest at the thought.

No.

No, she couldn’t have taken it, and maybe it speaks a _lot_ of how much she cares about him - she _has_ bedded men, she has liked most of them, she definitely loved a few, and none of them was like _him_ , and the mere idea that she might feel for him _that_ strongly but he never could for her makes her stomach curl over on itself all over again.

So she took the coward’s way out and asked Jaskier to tell Geralt where she lived if he saw him outside the inn, and that he could come by and catch up with her whenever he wanted, and she doesn’t particularly like what it says about herself, but it’s not as if she can take it back now.

Maybe he’ll come. Maybe he won’t. She has a feeling he won’t until the march happens, but that’s quite all right, she can wait. She’s waited… weeks, she can wait a few more days. Bloody hell, she thinks he’d be worth waiting _years_ for except that she doesn’t want to.

She wants to play that song to him so badly she’s _bursting_ with it.

She locks back the drawer she keeps its sheets in.

After he comes by. After she fesses up. And even if he says he’s not interested, she’ll play it for him anyway at some point.

She just wishes it didn’t feel so damned _complicated_.

She shakes her head, stands up from her small desk, grabs her lute and shawl and heads out. She has to find a carriage to bring her to an estate outside town where she should play at a wedding, and she has no desire to, but it’s money and the occasional noble marriage still makes more than the whole week at inns, and so she will.

She can’t help thinking that none of the people who will listen to her perform tonight without remembering her face in the morning would like that ballad she wrote for Geralt, not at all.

**well the missions are filled with hermits, they're looking for a friend**

“You know, I quite like the way you sit in the corner and brood.”

 _What the hell_ , Geralt thinks as he looks up from his beer and glares at whoever’s the poor soul who thought _that_ was a way to approach someone.

Turns out, the poor soul is a man that looks a few years younger than him, with bright blue eyes and wavy, long-ish brown hair and who’s looking at him way more cheerily than anyone else ever honestly has, which means he most likely is bad news and wants to scam him into buying something he has no money for. Geralt is about to tell him to fuck off, and then he doesn’t for two reasons. First, he just _went and sat down in front of him_ without waiting for an answer. Second, that Geralt has actually noticed the _clothes_ he’s wearing.

Now, he _had_ presumed he was some scammer, but scammers do _not_ wear… actually good clothing. It’s _weird_ , because Geralt’s been around enough nobles (or at least, has stabled their horses) enough to recognize what kind of things they wear - maybe not the latest fashion, but _a fashion_. And this man here is wearing bright blue trousers and jacket and a white silken shirt under a creamy coat that… are _definitely_ some kind of noble fashion, and are also very well-kept _and_ worn-out, which would make no sense if he actually had money, because people who have it usually do _not_ let their clothing get worn-out.

“Well, I was here to drink alone,” Geralt replies, “but I suppose I’m not anymore. What’s about my brooding?”

“It just looks fascinating, and also, you were the only person in this room who didn’t tell me to stop reciting my last poem.”

Oh, that was _him_. Geralt had _heard_ it, though he hadn’t bothered looking at who was reading out loud.

“Well,” he says, “I’ve heard worse.”

“That’s it? Just three words? I was hoping for some opinion that wasn’t _shut up, I want more beer_.”

Geralt snorts despite himself - the way this guy is _still_ here and hasn’t left _and_ actually doesn’t seem too bothered by the lack of stellar opinions on his work is kind of getting to him, in the good sense.

“I suppose,” he says, “that it wasn’t too bad. It _sounded_ nice. And the intentions… were in the right place.” If he hasn’t heard wrong, it was protesting the fact that the government was paving golden roads for Wellington and leaving the low-born soldiers to fend for themselves, and _surely_ , months after being back, Geralt can entirely appreciate the intentions indeed.

“But? I can hear a _but_.”

“I was there,” he shrugs. “At Waterloo, I mean. It’s nowhere near as glorious as you made it sound like. Yes, even if we won.”

“Well, well, _well_ ,” the other man says, “I mean, that’s what I figured, but alas, not many people who were there actually want to talk about it.”

“I can believe that,” Geralt cuts him off. _He_ doesn’t want to talk about it. “Especially if it’s someone with money they’re talking to.”

The man grins wider. “Oh, so you figured it out. What betrayed me?”

“No one who makes the money _I_ make could afford that coat.”

“ _Fair_ ,” he replies, “except that I would like to point out that this is _very_ old fashion and I currently do _not_ make that much money.”

“... How so?” Geralt asks, in spite of himself. “And who the hell are you anyway?”

The man smiles wider. “I mean, would be a _long_ name, used to be a viscount and all, but as I am sadly disinherited as it is, Jaskier will do.”

“What name is even _that_?”

“It’s Polish for a very nice flower,” he goes on, “and I happened to like it.”

“And why would you speak Polish?”

“Some relatives had ancestry there and figured we should try and learn it. Anyway, I always was more interested in writing poetry and songs than what my father thought I should care about, and at some point I started using my brain and decided that the current system in this fair country was shit, we argued and here I am. My clothing might be good but just because I salvaged it before leaving.”

“And how would you make a living now?”

“Oh, I have a printer’s shop. And I write poetry. And songs. And perform them here, sometimes. And _you_ are?”

Right. Fair enough.

“Geralt,” he says. “And you really _don’t_ want to know about how things were in the war. Good for you that you weren’t there.”

“And what if I think,” Jaskier presses, “that I _really_ do want to know? Not just for poetical reasons. Maybe I just do.”

Geralt can’t help looking at him as if he can’t figure him out. “What the hell,” he says, “did you happen to be the one person in the household who bothered to talk to the staff?”

“I _only_ talked to the staff,” Jaskier shrugs, “they were the only people who’d actually listen to me, so I listened to them in return.”

Somehow, Geralt thinks, that sounds just about right.

“Fine,” he says, “what do you want to know?”

He’s halfway sure that he’s going to run off after a minute - someone with that soft face and bright eyes and wearing silken shirts could _never_ handle hearing it for longer than that.

When, two hours later, Jaskier _is still there_ , occasionally taking notes, Geralt knows he had him pegged down wrong.

“And you’re telling me,” he says, “you don’t get… any money for your service? And your brothers don’t either?”

“Please,” Geralt shrugs, “it’s a miracle they let me buy off my horse with some of the last pay they gave me. Giving us money _after_? They don’t care.”

“I know,” Jaskier sighs, “I _do_ know that,” and Geralt doesn’t know what the fuck is about the guy but he actually trusts that he’s sincere, and when he’s told that he looks like the man you could write songs about heroics and heartbreak about he tells him to fuck off without meaning it, and when the next evening he sits down at Geralt’s table, he doesn’t tell him to get up and leave.

He doesn’t do that the next day either.

When after two weeks he realizes that maybe, just maybe, they might be friends at this point…

He doesn’t know how the _fuck_ that happened.

He also realizes he _really_ has no problem with that notion, and if he keeps it for himself for a while, well.

No one has to know.

**those orphans jumped on silver mountains lost in celestial alleyways**

“I _knew_ you liked him,” Jaskier says, staring at her parchment, “but - Poppet, _seriously_?”

“Seriously _what_ now? I just wanted an opinion.”

“ _Please_ , as if you need it - it’s _great_ , as usual when we’re talking about your sadly too rare original compositions, but it’s obvious who it is about and you could have just _told_ me, you know?”

She shrugs. “I guess I didn’t know I liked him… that much?” She shrugs, suddenly blushing as she finds it hard to look at him, which is just fucking _stupid_ \- she’s known Jaskier for years, why would she?

“Oh, _that much_ ,” Jaskier scoffs, “this isn’t just a song, this is a whole _ballad_ and if you know him there is no way that the _orphans_ in the title isn’t there to deceive the listener into thinking it’s about more than one person, which is all good but he’ll know the moment he hears it, you know _that_?”

She shrugs. “He doesn’t have to hear it until I’m sure he wouldn’t hate it,” she says.

“ _Hate it_ ,” Jaskier scoffs _again_ , “I don’t think that’s in the cards. I can tell you that first he’d deny to himself that it _could_ be, then he’d have to make peace with it and then he’d tell you that you have to be insane to think _he_ is a decent song subject, and _then_ he might just realize he actually isn’t doomed at romance.”

“Wait,” she says, “are you saying that -”

“I’m saying,” Jaskier says, “that he _absolutely_ likes you too but will never admit it to himself because until now he hasn’t had _one_ thing going right in that sense and he’s sure he’s doomed to just be alone forever, and I’ve known him long enough to be sure of it, and this is all honestly _ridiculous_ and I should just lock the both of you in the shop until you’re done discussing it -”

“Jaskier -”

“Don’t worry, you can use the backroom. I did bring a fair amount of women in there, it’s absolutely clean -”

“ _Jaskier_ , for the love of - I’m not going to proposition your friend for whom _I just wrote a ballad_ in your back room.”

“Then proposition him wherever you like, but I think he won’t say no. Maybe play that song to him _after_ , though. Might make sure he doesn’t decide you’re too good for him or something like that.”

That’s… sound advice, Essi figures. She nods, taking back her papers.

“It’s a really good ballad, though,” Jaskier says. “Fancy performing it for an audience after _he_ does hear it?”

“Maybe I will,” she smiles back. “And thank you, though I’m not using your backroom.”

“Your loss,” he shrugs before he goes back to his printing - Essi grabs a few flyers on her way out, she could give them out at the next tavern she plays at tonight. Not the usual, and it will be a one-time performance, but apparently the pay is decent and if it was she could just take a week and polish that ballad for good, and then.

And _then_.

Then she will play it for him, _somehow_.

**now don't you grow on empty legends or lonely cradle songs**

“I haven’t seen you in a while,” Essi says, and Geralt looks back at her as if he can’t quite wrap his head around the fact that she _would_ miss him.

“It was… I don’t know if I could say, a busy time.”

“Why not?”

“Because it would mean that we actually did make some money. Which… is not the case.”

She nods, moving her chair closer to his, not _so_ close that it would be improper but enough that she can feel the heat radiating off him. _He runs a bit hot_ , she thinks. Considering that she always tended to run a bit cold, she finds out she doesn’t mind that at all.

“Is business going… so badly?”

He shrugs. “It has since another blacksmith’s shop opened somewhere further down the street - most people who come from outside town see it first and so there aren’t new customers. And it’s been there since the war, at least. We ended up selling every horse but my own, but I don’t know how long that money’s going to last, considering _how much_ bread costs these days.”

“You… own a horse?”

He smiles a bit, _finally_ looking like he doesn’t have a burned on his shoulder since the first time she’s met him.

“Roach,” he says, “I brought her back from the war. Figured she might be useful at the shop and it would help coming and going to the nearby towns faster if I needed to, and it was a good idea, just… not with business like that. The others we had were too old or less healthy, so - for now she’s staying.”

“I see,” she nods, “I - I hope it gets better, truly.”

“I do, too,” he sighs, “but it’s never going to happen like this. I was half in mind of going to the march in a couple of weeks.”

“Oh,” she says, “the one Jaskier’s been printing all those flyers for and that he said he’d try to write something about?”

“Yes,” he shrugs. “I’m not _that_ enthusiastic and honestly, since when have these things ever worked, but the point is sound and _someone_ has to make sure we get noticed before we all starve, so. I might be going.”

She nods. “You’re right,” she says, “and the government should have just done something about it a _long_ time ago.”

“As if they care,” he shakes his head. “I think I’ve known they don’t since forever. I just wish - never mind.”

“What?” She presses, gently, feeling that he _has_ to talk about it but is obviously feeling like he has no business burdening her with it.

He sighs. “That I wasn’t _the only one_ who can get regular work all the time in between all of us. It’s not even anyone’s fault and no one has guilted me into it, but - it’s tiring.” He sighs, drinking more of his ale. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have -”

“I get it,” she says. “I mean, I can’t _get_ it, but - I understand it. And considering that all three of you risked your life in that war maybe they _should_ have paid you something more than they actually did. Or pay you after.”

“Oh, I wish,” he sighs. “Which I guess is why I really should go to that march. Vesemir _will_ have my hide, but it’s the principle of it.”

“Please tell me all about it after,” she says, “we’re always looking for good ballad material.”

“As if _Jaskier_ won’t be on my case for my point of view on it,” he says, but he’s half-smiling and oh, she thinks she likes seeing him smile instead of frown most of the time.

“I’m sure it can’t be _that_ bad.”

“Maybe not,” he concedes, and goes back to his beer in silence, and she wants to tell him so badly that she lives near St. Peter’s field and he should visit her at some point, but - Jaskier _did_ have a more than one point when he said the man looked reticent to direct avances.

Maybe she should ask Jaskier to tell him.

Maybe that would work.

She thinks about that ballad she still has to polish.

 _Soon_ , she decides. She’s playing it for him _very_ , very soon.

**the night she's long and lanky and she speaks in a mother tongue**

“What if,” Essi says as she locks the door behind her, even if anyone trying to break the lock would manage it - serves her well for not finding better lodgings, but she’s still not swimming in gold, either - “I had a proposition for tonight?”

The way Geralt’s cheeks flush ever so slightly in the candlelight makes her blood rush downwards, and then he clears his throat and speaks again in that rough, low voice. “What if I told you that… I absolutely would hear it?”

Maybe she shouldn’t propose this _now_ , not when they’ve been seeing each other regularly for a month since that march but haven’t really… discussed it. And she still hasn’t played him that song, though she _should_. But - but it’s not _that much_. It’s not even a fraction of what she’d like to do with him, if he was willing.

Maybe she should just ask him instead of overthinking it so much.

“Then we should get to the bedroom,” she says, and she can see him swallowing as he nods and follows her inside. She opens the drawer of her nightstand, where the sheets with that ballad’s music and lyrics are folded, and next to them -

She ignores it for the moment and takes from the drawer the blue laces from an old corset she’s thrown away recently, it had been too worn-out and it barely even fit her any more, but the laces were a sturdy cotton that hadn’t worn out, and when she turns towards him and shows them in between her fingers, he gasps… in the _good_ way.

“Yes,” he says at once, not even making her ask, and -

She tries to not shudder.

“Then,” she says, not letting her voice waver, “maybe you should lay down, shouldn’t you?”

He nods, pulling off his boots, and she stops him before he takes off his shirt - _she_ does it instead, unlacing it slowly before peeling it off that lean frame of his, and she can feel him shudder as she does before she pushes him towards the bed.

He goes, laying down on it and holding out his wrists, above his head.

“Very good,” she tells him, hearing the intake of breath as she says it and grabs one wrist before taking the first of the laces and tying him to the left side of the bedpost first. When she’s sure it’s not too tight she does the same with the other, her hands squeezing his wrists before letting them go and running her fingers along his arms, until she reaches his shoulders, and he has his eyes closed and he’s breathing in heavily, his cock pressing against her leg through trousers that are so worn thin she doesn’t know how the cloth hasn’t ripped yet. “ _Very_ very good,” she says, and he moans a little again, his hips arching up when her hair brushes over his cheeks.

She leans down, unlacing the trousers and pulling them down along with his smallclothes as he breathes in what sounds like relief at not having them on anymore. He’s just - she wants to kiss him all over and touch him all over and she can’t understand _how_ he seems to presume he’s somehow repulsive to the sight because now that he’s spread like this under her hands she can’t imagine wanting anyone else underneath, and when she leans down and kisses him as her fingers grasp at his chest and pull on his pecs, he moans _hard_ into her mouth, his cock searching for friction against her dress.

“And do you want _this_?” She asks - she’s never quite stopped asking for it, anything she does, and the way he always answers as if he can’t believe she’s asking him makes her stomach curl on itself, but she needs to know -

“Please,” he blurts, “please, _yes_ , I -”

“Good,” she says, “ _very_ good,” and she notices how he arches up into her touch too as she says it, his face pressing against her hand as she runs her fingers down his throat and over his stomach, and he groans when her fingers wrap around his cock, and she takes another deep breath before leaning over so her mouth is right over his ear.

“I think,” she says, “that you should spend on my hand, and then _I_ should in your mouth, and then I should take your cock again, while your hands are tied there and you stay still for me, how about _that_?”

He _moans_ at that, his hips jerking up again. “ _Yes_ ,” he chokes out, “ _please_ , yes -”

“No need to beg,” she says, and then starts stroking his cock for real, slow at first as she feels him harden in between her fingers, and - _actually_ , she thinks on it again, maybe she shouldn’t just use her hands, and so she leans down and takes it in her mouth, and so what if her neighbors _definitely_ heard him screaming as she did?

She runs her tongue along the head and then all over it, sucking on it softly as he hardens inside her mouth, the salty flavor filling her mouth as she keeps her fingers behind the base, stroking it over and over, and she’s pretty sure that he’s tried to warn her that he’s close, but that’s exactly what she wanted and so she stays right where she is until he cants his hips upward and and comes in a rush inside her mouth, and she thinks he’s sobbing her name as he does, and she doesn’t move as she swallows as much of it as she can, only moving back when it becomes too much, and she moves her hand back on him until he’s spent. When she licks it clean she can see him staring at her with dark, golden eyes and his face completely flushed and that soft, white hair all spread on the pillow, and her blood rushes _down_ again, bloody hell, she _needs_ -

She pulls away her soaked smallclothes before raising her skirt and moving up until she’s sitting on his mouth, and when she does he almost surges up, his tongue finding her cunt at once, curling around her clit like it’s the last thing it’s going to do, and when she reaches down and tugs at his hair he _moans_ into it before rolling it over and sliding it inside her, then out and then sucking on her cunt, and she’s telling him he’s doing it perfectly and that she needs more before she knows she’s doing it, and he goes at it _harder_ as her legs shake and shake and she pushes his head into her cunt harder, until she feels like all of her blood is boiling as she spills on his face and she feels his throat move up and down as she drinks it all up, her fingers’s grip going a bit slacker on his hair as she starts running them into those white locks instead of tugging, and when she moves back his face is _glistening_ in her and he’s looking at her so softly, so -

She moves back down, noticing that however long this took, it definitely made him hard _again_ , and he moans loud again when she sinks on his cock, clenching around it as she rolls her hips downwards and screams his name as she does, and he moans _harder_ when she tells him he’s doing perfectly just as he starts matching his thrusts to hers, and she just keeps on riding him over and over until he’s spilling inside her _hard_ , and she clenches around him as she peaks just after he does, screaming his name over and over as her legs tremble and she feels like she’ll just faint on him, except she manages not to as her entire frame shakes for how _good_ it feels, and by the time she’s slid off him and moved forward to untie his wrists, she feels like she’s positively floating - she undoes the knots with trembling fingertips, kissing each wrist, and when he looks at her as she does his eyes are wide and they look positively bright gold in that candlelight, and before she can just drop down next to him and curl in closer he takes a breath and moves down on the bed and in between her legs, his tongue licking her clean almost dutifully, and by the time he’s done she’s worked up _again_ and she’s spilled as he sucked at her clit _again_ , and when she tells him to _just get over here already_ he does, his cheeks still half-flushed, but he’s grinning as if he _knows_ exactly how much she liked it -

She throws a lace behind his neck and pulls him _closer_ and kisses him again, feeling him melt against her as she does, and she just keeps on kissing him until she’s out of breath and he drops his head on her shoulder, his cheek pressed against her breast, and then -

“Essi?” He whispers, his voice hoarse, not quite looking at her.

“Yes?”

“... Do you think you might - want to come for a ride on Roach sometime? If I can ever take a day off,” he adds, almost sheepishly, but it sounded so _sincere_ as he asked, and she thinks she has a feeling of what it means that he asked, and so she moves a hand at the back of his head, running her fingers through that soft hair again, and -

“I would love it,” she says, meaning it, and she can feel him smiling ever so slightly against her skin.

Next time, she swears herself, _next time_ she’s going to play him that song.

**she lullabies the refugees with amplifier's hum**

There’s snow falling outside as the inn gets progressively crowded and _crowded_ \- Geralt suppresses a shudder. He never was the most enthusiastic person when it came to be surrounded by others, the war just made it worse and Peterloo sealed it, and the only reason he’s not leaving right now is that he knows that everyone else coming in - or most of them anyway - had been there with him. Oh, it was because Nivellen invited over some of the journalists who were arrested at Peterloo so that they could give them news on what they _didn’t_ accomplish, but he’s not here for _that_.

He’s here because Jaskier and Essi _finally_ agreed on performing together just for the occasion and he knows what she’s going to sing - he told her she could -, and he knows she’s never sang it for an audience, and so he will stay for it, and maybe he should tell them that instead of bickering about songwriting they should do this more because they have nice voices that blend very well together, and so what if when they sing _Four-Loom Weaver_ he has to retreat to the corner because his eyes _burn_ as they sing at the same time _I’ve nowt to eat and I’ve worn out my clothes_ , because doesn’t he know _that_ down to his bones, same as everyone else in this room?

They play that _twice_ , and then a few ballads that are somehow less heartwrenching, and then Jaskier makes some joke about being honored that Essi would let him join in on _her_ splendid new composition, and when Geralt sees _other people_ cry as she sings again about orphans whose lives are gone like candle lengths in a goodnight whisper he feels _something_ crack in his chest but in the good way - no one knows who that song is about and he still can’t believe it was supposed to be about _him_ except that it is, but whoever’s not crying is nodding along to it and by the time they’re finished the entire room has stood up and they’re clapping and he doesn’t know what to make of it, except that as he claps, too, Essi’s eyes catch his from across the room and she sends a lovely, soft smile his way, and his stomach turns over again -

Just in the _good_ way.

He lets himself smile back.

He thinks he knows how that song makes him feel, or at least _one way_ it makes him feel, and he’d have never thought _proud_ would be a word he’d attach to _himself_ but he thinks it might be, and he’s - he’s pretty sure that it’s not all of it, and he should tell her later when he goes to her place where he’s sleeping more times than not, lately -

But when they agree to play it again, he decides he really doesn’t mind hearing it again.

Maybe he even _likes_ it.

**the confederacy's in my name now, the hounds are held at bay**

“I see that you’re _serious_ about this,” Jaskier grins, and Geralt wishes he _wouldn’t_ look like a cat who just ate his cream, but considering how pleased he’s been with having been involved with what he defined as _his two favorite people finding each other, I should write a song about it for sure_ and the likes, he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised.

“What if I am?” He says, wishing he’d just say yes, give Geralt the damned advice and then they could go back to discussing politics.

“I’m saying it was about time,” Jaskier grins wider. “I’m sure the song was what sealed it, didn’t it -”

“Jaskier, _please_ , just - can we get to the point?”

“Right, _right_ , I won’t force you to discuss your feelings about having had a whole entire ballad penned for your lovely self and I’ll say I’m all ears. What did you mean now with _I want to get her something_ , because that’s not very specific and I can’t advise you if you don’t tell me what exactly are you conveying here. I doubt you want to propose, or -”

“I don’t know,” he shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t know if she’d care for it, which is also why I’m asking, and the last time I thought about it -”

( _Fact is, even if she said she didn’t care for marriage, he had bought Yen a ring when they had started… trying. It was a month where there had been a spike of work that never happened again until now, and for the first time in ages they had made enough so that all four of them could save some money for themselves. Geralt had thought to just not touch his in case hard times were coming, but then Lambert had shown up and given him his share saying that he didn’t know what to make with it as it was and it was obvious he had his eyes set on Yen so he should just make a honest woman out of her or at least ask her, and he wouldn’t take it back, and it had been enough for a nice ring, nothing fancy, rose gold with a iolite purple gem in the middle. He never gave it to her, figuring he would see if she’d change her mind in the meantime, and after it all went to shit it ended up at a pawnshop after things went sour._ )

“And - I’ll just show you first,” he sighs, reaching carefully into his pocket, making sure the small box he carefully kept hidden inside is still there.

He’s very, _very_ glad that their table tonight is secluded and in the farthest corner of the room as he opens it and Jaskier bites down on his tongue to avoid _most likely_ exclaiming something.

“Where did you even find _that_?” He whispers, looking down at the blue pearl nestled inside the box - it’s not perfectly round and the necklace it’s hanging on is half-broken, but still… no one could presume it was fake.

“I told you about that French noblewoman who was looking for someone to open some box her late husband left her without actually ruining the lock because it was an _expensive_ box with an expensive lock?”

“The Countess De Stael? Sure you did. Did you volunteer?”

“As much as I have to recycle my skills for horse care,” he says, “I _can_ do that. I volunteered and I opened it without breaking her precious golden lock, and at the bottom of it there was this, and she said it was too ruined for her to do anything about it and the entire box was filled with other pearls like that, the husband got it in a trade with some merchant in the East. And - she likes blue. I thought - I could do something with it.”

Jaskier nods, looking at it, then back at him. “Never matter if _she_ cares for it. Do you want to give her a ring or not?”

Damn him for getting to the bottom of the question this soon. He had hoped he could just… skirt around it, but it’s obvious he _can’t_ at this point.

“What if I do?” He asks, putting the pearl back inside his pocket.

“Then go for it,” Jaskier replies. “She might not care for you to make an honest woman out of her, _that_ I don’t know, but she _would_ wear it, I know that.”

“Except I can hardly afford to have it mounted anywhere, if I had to -”

“And who says you should? I _do_ know a few goldsmiths that’ll seem you the raw material, if you don’t. Just get one to give you advice and do it yourself, it _is_ your trade after all.”

He sighs. “I thought about it, but - I don’t do _refined_ things, usually. It’d probably look - _bad_ , or -”

“It would come from _you_ ,” Jaskier cuts him off, “and I think she cares more about _that_ then about however the hell it looks. So, should I ask around and get back at you?”

“... Yes,” he says after considering it, and the way Jaskier grins just after shouldn’t make him feel warmer but it does, and the pearl inside his pocket doesn’t seem to burn through it as before.

Turns out, Jaskier _does_ know a guy who would be amenable to give him free advice _and_ to sell him some pinchbeck and blue enamel without asking for impossible prices, and he doesn’t have enough saved to spare for the whole thing but Jaskier insists to pay it himself saying that if they actually do get married he’ll be excused of a wedding present.

He accepts it, vowing to pay him back whenever he _does_ have some money, and then spends the next few days studying the possible designs he was advised to try with with the pearl _and_ the enamel, and at the end of it he settles on a shaping that pinchbeck into a woven golden band to which he attaches a flower-shaped top - the pearl is in the center with the smaller round petals in blue enamel surrounding it, placed so that the flat side doesn’t show. He has to work on it during the night and when Eskel walks in on him doing it he just gives him a nod before going back to sleep and wishing him good luck.

At the end, the band is a _bit_ rougher than he had wanted it to be, and it’s nowhere as fine a work as a goldsmith would have managed, but it _is_ pretty enough, and it _is_ wearable, and he’s pretty sure he knows the size of her finger.

He slides it back into the box, at least it’s nice since the countess herself gave it to him, then locks it in his nightstand drawer as he realizes that it’s another five days since she comes back from an engagement in Scotland.

It will be some long five days, he thinks to himself as he goes to sleep and the next morning as he puts the box inside his pocket again - he’s _not_ leaving it around if he can help it.

And maybe he can just give it to her as soon as she’s back - he did promise to bring her riding. He could wrestle Vesemir into letting him have the day free and do it.

He should just do _that_ , he decides, and when everyone else asks him why he looks in a better mood than usual today, he shrugs and tells them to mind their business.

But maybe… it’s not such a bad thing that they can see it.

**so break me now as Old Faithful breaks the day**

Essi hadn’t expected visits on Christmas evening - she hasn’t celebrated in years, not that she cares for it, she has no family to celebrate it with anyway, Jaskier’s certainly _celebrating_ it but not in a way that her little village’s priest would have approved of - or that his family would have - and Geralt said that it still was possibly a business day for them so he would just… stay at the shop and maybe meet her at the inn for New Year’s Eve. So she had decided she’d work on some new songs and try to not die of cold while she’s at it, she _really_ needs better lodgings, except that just after she’s done eating what she could put together for a dinner there’s a knock on the door.

She opens it and -

Geralt is standing out of it in a coat way thinner than anyone should wear at this time of the year, looking like he has barely eaten and like he needs to sleep for a month.

“Come in,” she says before he can ask.

“Thanks,” he says, his voice sounding rougher than usual.

“... What’s wrong?” She asks after closing the door.

“Was it so obvious that something is?”

“You look like shite and it’s Christmas evening, does it have to be any more obvious?”

“Fair,” he concedes, sitting next to the small fire she had going. It doesn’t seem to be working much, given that his coat is coated in snow. “I think I slept twelve hours in the last three days. Total. Probably.”

“ _What_?”

“Someone stoned the windows in my room.”

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I have a feeling that arsehole you argued with in the shop paid a few kids to do it, or maybe - I don’t know. He kickstarted those rumors about my mother again. Anyway, there’s no money to fix the windows and I can only room with the brother who _doesn’t_ sleep at night because it’s the largest, so there was _that_.”

“Bloody hell,” she says, putting a hand on his icy shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“There was also the part where we actually _did_ have business because some people passed by and it pays to be open on Christmas day, but it was just enough for the windows, so I’m considering just letting them be for now, we need the money for more pressing matters. And dinner was boiled cabbage that wasn’t even that good, but that’s what there was to buy lately.”

“No church?”

“Please,” he snorts, “none of us bought into that for years. Which hasn’t made things easier, but - no, I just -” He shrugs, doesn’t finish the sentence, not quite looking at her.

Oh.

“What?” She presses, gently, curling her fingers around his shoulders.

“I just felt miserable,” he blurts, and - it’s the first time he downright admits _that_ , and her heart skips a beat as she moves behind him, her arms circling his icy waist.

“Fancy doing something about it?” She asks. “I actually did want to try something out. If you’re willing.”

“I’m all ears,” he replies, standing up and following her to the bedroom after shedding the coat. She doesn’t tell him to take off his shirt as she lights a fire there, too - two fireplaces is the only good thing about this house, really - and waits for him to sit on the bed before she opens a drawer in the wardrobe and takes out a satchel, then moves back to the bed and hands it over to him.

To his credit, he doesn’t look _much_ surprised when he opens it and the dark wooden cock inside it slips out - certainly, way less than any other man she proposed it to. She had bought it some years ago with money she gained playing at some particularly insufferable noblewoman’s wedding - she forgot the name but it had been _good_ money, and the shop Jaskier referred her to back in the day had been well-stocked - after realizing she _did_ want to try that in bed, and she kept it after realizing she _liked_ it, and - well.

Not every man she’s asked said yes, but from the way he’s looking back at her, she thinks he will.

Still -

“If you don’t care for it -”

“Case is,” he says, “I haven’t… tried _that_ , but let’s say I have been with women who did not enjoy lying back and taking it. And I might have been asked stranger things than _that._ ”

“I see,” she nods. “But still -”

“I think I’d like to try it,” he says, and he sounds like he means it and like he _really_ needs a break, and so she nods and tells him to lie down and get comfortable - she puts the cock on the side and makes a point of undressing _slowly_ , taking off her dress first and unlacing her corset later before sliding it off, letting her breasts free. She takes a moment to breathe in relief at that and when she turns back to look at him, he’s staring at her with wider, darker eyes, laying down across the pillows, hands grasping the sheets. She can see that he’s hard under his trousers, though not all the way, but that’s quite all right - she places the corset and the dress on the nearest chair before sliding off her smallclothes and remaining naked in front of him as he takes in a sharper breath that she can _hear_.

She smiles a tiny bit as she takes back the wooden cock and the leather harness it came with - it _had_ cost her a fair amount back in the day but it’s served her well until now - and she slides it on, fixing it so that it stays in place, and when she looks back at him, his cheeks are flushing _harder_.

“Changing your mind?” She asks, kneeling on the bed.

“No,” he says, and it’s obvious he means it, from the _strangled_ way it came out of his mouth.

She reaches out, taking a small bottle of oil from her nightstand - she uses it for her lamps, but it might serve for now, then leaves it within reach, and then leans down and kisses him, her tongue running over his lips just as he parts them for her at once, his own curling against hers as her hands cup his cheeks and her fingertips grasp at the sides of his face - when she moves back to breathe he turns his face to the side and kisses her palm and she doesn’t know what sound leaves her mouth at _that_ but he must have liked it, since he does it with the _other_ one and then her wrists.

She ignores the rush of blood that went to her crotch at _that_ and kisses him again while a hand moves down and runs all over his chest, then the other, and she doesn’t even try to move until the skin under her fingertips isn’t cold anymore, and when he’s arching up into her hands, small moans leaving his mouth over and over, she kisses him again just as his fingers find her breasts - they’re still a bit cold but she doesn’t mind as she lets him touch them and run his fingers on her back too, and maybe she misses his mouth on her cunt a _lot_ , but -

Maybe she can ask him later.

Now -

She moves back, running her hands along his thighs, and she doesn’t know what _weirder_ things he did before - or was asked to do before - but she knows that she can’t help moaning when he spreads his legs open without her needing to ask.

“God,” she breathes, “yes, that’s - that’s perfect, just like that,” and he whines at that, not trying to keep his voice down but he’s stopped that a while ago and she’s absolutely delighted with _that_. She likes his voice. She also likes his voice even more when he’s moaning for her like this.

She pours a bit of oil on her fingers before moving her hand behind his cock, finding the crack of his ass, and at _that_ point he makes a louder noise and turns on his stomach, and _fine_ , she’d have preferred looking at him in the face but she can do that later, can’t she?

“How thoughtful,” she says, and he shudder again as her fingers find the rim again, and he swears under his breath when she moves a fingertip in and keeps it on the side, moving it around, and -

“ _Fuck_ ,” he says, “ _fuck_ , that’s - go slow, but - _don’t stop_.”

“Duly noted,” she grins back, and keeps on circling his entrance until she pours a bit more oil and slides _two_ fingertips in, and he moans again, telling her to _keep on going_ , and so she pours more oil and slides her fingers inside farther, and then does it _again_ , until she has two fingers right inside his ass, and he’s clenching around them but he’s also warm and _tight_ and she has stared at his ass for more time than she could count even _before_ they fell into a bed together for the first time and she’s been wanting to take him apart like this for a _long_ time, and -

“How does it feel?” She asks, moving her fingers in and out.

He _moans_. “Good,” he says, “good, fuck, your fingers -”

“What about my fingers?”

“They’re _nice_ ,” he slurs against the pillow, “rough but not too much. They’re good fingers.”

“Why, thank you,” she smiles, “but I think you can try to take a bit more now. Can I -”

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, not letting her finish, sounding like his heartbeat has just tripled speed, and so she moves back and coats the wooden cock in that oil before moving back on top of him and angling it so that the head is right over his entrance.

She runs a hand over his back, and then she starts _pushing_.

He groans as she does, and she takes her time - goes in _slow_ , inch by inch, stopping if he tells her to, running a hand along his spine all the time as she does.

“God,” she says, as she sees the dark wood disappear inside him, “you’re taking it _perfectly_.”

“Am I,” he moans, “ _fuck_ , it’s - something _else_ , just -”

“I’ll go slow,” she says, “I _will_ ,” and she does, inch by inch until it’s almost all inside him, and he’s breathing hard but not telling her it feels bad, actually -

“It’s good,” he says, “it _is_ , I -”

“Just wait until I do _this_ ,” she says, moving back and thrusting forward, and he moans harder. Well then. She moves back, does it _again_ , angling it slightly differently -

He _screams_.

“Fuck - _fuck_ ,” he blurts, “what -”

“Felt good?” She smiles a bit wider, hands grasping his hips.

“Yes,” he says, “what the _hell_ -”

“I think,” she goes on, “we can explain things later and you can just be very, _very_ good for me and stay just like that,” and when he nods against the pillow, almost urgently, she rolls her hips again, making sure the angle doesn’t change, and then she’s fucking into him _properly_ , in and out, moving the pace up, and he’s grasping the sheets and screaming her name over and over, and Essi is damn sure she _will_ come untouched on that harness because just the sight of him is making her lose her mind, if only she could look at him in the face -

He moans her name _louder_ then before he’s going rigid and spilling all over the sheets and _fuck_ she didn’t even touch him, _he_ didn’t even touch himself for the matter -

Her own rush of pleasure hits her so hard it almost knocks her off balance, right as she’s still buried deep inside him, and so maybe she can feel how _wet_ her harness is after that, and _fuck_ his ass is glistening with it, and she doesn’t know how damned _long_ she just floated as she spilled over him, but at least she hasn’t actually fainted, and he’s breathing in _fast_ even after she does, and -

He groans in displeasure when she pulls out, but she has to -

“Hey,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “I need - on your back.”

He nods, letting her help him turn, and when he looks up at her his eyes are wide and _soft_ and he looks like he’s also just had the rush of his life, and -

“Can I - can we do it like this?” She asks. “I want to look at you.”

He lets another moan out of his mouth again before he nods and pulls his legs back, enough that she can see his entrance enough to angle the wooden cock again, and when she slides inside this time she does it at once, and the _fuck yes more_ that leaves his mouth makes her coherence leave completely - she fucks into him at once, _hard_ , and his legs close around her back as her mouth finds his. She kisses him at once, her tongue sliding into his mouth and staying there until she can’t breathe anymore, keeping on sliding in and out of him as he bucks up against her.

“God,” she blurts as she looks down at his face, her left hand moving at the back of his head while the right finds his cock and strokes it until it’s hard all over again, “god, you’re doing so well, you’re so _good_ , you feel just perfect don’t you -”

He whines again, and she keeps on telling him exactly how _good_ he feels and how good he’s making her feel as she keeps on thrusting, and then she’s thrusting in _deeper_ and he’s told her that he’s close and she’s telling him that it’s good, she _wants_ him to let go, and his eyes roll upwards as he moans again and actually _does_ just after she says it, spending at once against her stomach as she buries herself inside him with a last, deep thrust, and that’s not enough to make her come again but it’s _this_ close, and so she stays there and _doesn’t move_ until he’s completely spent, and just _then_ she pulls out, takes off the harness and moves over so she can sit on his face, and it takes him an embarrassing little amount of time to curl his tongue on her cunt just _right_ and for her to peak all over and drench his face in water, all the blood in the lower part of her body _boiling_ , and when she has the strength to move back he’s smiling up at her, not _wide_ but enough that it’s obvious.

She leans down, kissing him slow, her hand massaging his stomach, and he kisses her back at once, uncoordinated but intently, and his hand is grasping weakly at her hip as she says that they can clean up tomorrow and pulls the covers with heavy winter blankets on top of them, and his head is resting on her chest again, and she doesn’t know how a guy that’s… that broader than she is, and taller, but mostly broader, can just fit against her just _right_ , but he does and she thinks she likes it.

Very much.

They should probably talk in the morning, too, but - but that can wait. She smiles as closes her eyes and runs her fingers through his hair - yes, it really can wait.

**the confederacy's in my name now, the hounds are held at bay**

It’s not that he hadn’t been sure of it before.

He _had_ , or he wouldn’t have made the damned ring himself.

It’s just that the moment he tells Vesemir that he _is_ taking next Sunday off, hoping that the good weather holds on until then, and he’s taking Roach for a ride, and no, he’s not negotiating on it, he _needs_ it, and not just for himself, he feels like a weight has been lifted off his shoulders, even before he gets the answer.

“I suppose it wouldn’t change _that_ much,” he agrees, even if Geralt can hear he’s tired and somewhat reluctant, but he gets it. He just - has to do it _now_. “You’re inviting that singer to that ride, aren’t you?”

“Was that so obvious?” Geralt asks, thinking of the ring he’s carrying with at all times these days. Essi already agreed to the ride for _that_ day, so he just had to communicate the decision, but - he hasn’t talked about her much, around here. Mostly because he _had_ talked about Yen and a few of the others he had flings that went nowhere with and he knows it’s irrational, but - he’ll do it soon, properly, just not _right now_.

“If someone knows you, yes,” Vesemir half-smiles. “Well, I hope it goes better than… all the other times. But are you sure about it?”

He _had_.

But then he shrugs and opens his mouth to say something along the lines of _I made her a ring myself, what do you think_ , and then, “I love her,” leaves his lips instead, just _that_ , and he had never - he had never _said_ it out loud even if he had _thought_ it, oh he _had_ , except that it felt like if he said it out loud he would just ruin it, and now it sounds stupid because nothing happened, the world hasn’t fallen, and Vesemir is looking at him with slightly softer eyes as he nods and he doesn’t seem to need him to say any more on the topic.

“I can hear it,” he says. “I hope she doesn’t mind not gaining a dime if she marries _you_ , though.”

He laughs, a tiny bit. “She’s known from the beginning that there were no dimes to be gained. I doubt _that_ would be the problem.”

“Good thing that,” Vesemir says. “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry there aren’t, but -”

“Please,” Geralt cuts him off, “don’t even go there. There might not be dimes to be gained but if it wasn’t for you I’d have died long before I could conceive the concept of dimes. Things are the way they are but I’m _fine_. I am. And I’ll be better if she accepts, so.”

“From the way she looked at you when she came here, I think she will,” Vesemir huffs. “And honestly, it was time. You deserve it, just don’t go around presuming the contrary.”

“What -”

“I said what I said and there’s work to be done if you want that day free,” Vesemir interrupts, and Geralt can hear it when someone wants a conversation to be over.

Still - he feels lighter, and he’s _looking forward_ to this Sunday, and -

Maybe he smiles throughout the entire day as he goes about his job.

If whoever always hangs out around this damned street whispers that he must have gone mad, he barely even pays attention.

He thinks he likes how it feels and he doesn’t want anyone else to spoil it.

**believe me, the aurora will shine the way**

“I’ll have to leave for a couple of weeks,” Essi tells Geralt on the way to her place, feeling very damned grateful that he gave her his jacket - it’s a bit warmer now during the days, but the nights are still _cold_ and she obviously miscalculated when she didn’t bring a coat as heavy as needed to the inn, before.

“For what?” He asks, sounding… like he _doesn’t want her to_.

She can’t help feeling a bit warmer hearing it.

“A few weddings,” she sighs, “which I _definitely_ hate, they’re boring and you’re surrounded by people way richer than you could even dream to become who barely even treat you like you matter, but I have a few friends from my hometown who’ll write me if there are more a few to play at in the same days, and they pay well, so - I should leave the day after tomorrow and come back two Saturdays from now.”

He nods, seeming to ponder it. “Well,” he says, “it’s going to be April by then. If - if the Sunday you come back the weather is good, we could… go on that ride?” He almost sounds hesitant as he asks, and her heart skips a bit - they _never_ did go on that ride, yes, but the weather has been terrible this winter, there just had been no means to.

“I would be delighted,” she smiles, and then his cheeks flush a bit harder, and -

“Maybe then you should make tonight… worth it, since I will have to remember _that_ for the next two weeks?”

“I think,” she says, “that it can be arranged,” and so what if she’s grinning all the way to her apartment?

He’s doing the same, for _his_ standards.

She just wishes he’d smile more often. It looks _good_ on him.

It really does.

\--

Not long later, he has his wrists tied to the bedframe with her usual blue laces, hands closed in a loose fist as three of her oiled fingers move in and out of his ass, going as far as she can manage to see if she can make him scream even without using the wooden cock _for now_ , and she thinks she might be getting there, with the way he’s moaning her name and how warm and tight he feels around her, and _hell_ the way he arches up towards her, baring his neck with all that hair falling all over the pillow never fails to make her blood burn in the good way, and when she leans down to kiss him he immediately parts his lips, her tongue finding his own as she fucks into him faster and harder - his cock is leaking all over her stomach, right above the laces of her harness, and she’s in mind of making him come just like _that_ before using the wooden cock, that is -

That is until he opens her eyes and looks up at her - they’re _wide_ and staring up into her own like he couldn’t conceive of being anywhere else and she pushes her fingers in _deeper_ and he moans and -

“Fuck,” he slurs, his voice low and muffled and getting caught in his throat as the words come out, “ _please_ , madam, I need it harder -”

The moment _that_ word leaves his mouth, another burst of fire takes hold of her - her blood feels _scorching_ , all cold forgotten, as her fingers shake a bit as she moves them back.

“Oh,” she says, “harder, you said?”

“Yes, madam, _please_ -”

She doesn’t know where _that_ came from, but what she knows is that she _likes_ it and she thinks she wants to hear it again, and she’s never - asked a man to call her like _that_ but the way it’s making her legs clench she thinks she wants it to happen _more_ , and so she takes away her hand, ignoring the whine that leaves his mouth, before moving back with the cock on his entrance and pushing him _at once_ , he did have three fingers inside him before, it shouldn’t be too hard, and he _moans_ at that, hard, and _fuck_ but she doesn’t know how long she’ll manage to keep it up considering how much her legs are shaking.

“Like _this_?” She asks, pushing inside him _harder_. He arches up, his legs closing around her back hard as he nods and his wrists pull on the laces.

“Yes,” he sobs, and she does it _again_ , moving in and out, in and out, fingers grasping at his shoulders and leaving most likely bruises, but he arches into that touch too, muttering _yes_ and _please_ under his breath, and she’s - she’s not going to last long, she knows, but -

“You’re taking it _perfectly_ ,” she manages to say, “aren’t you just so _good_ for me?”

He moans again, and _again_ , as she keeps on fucking into him and telling him _exactly_ how much he’s being very, very good for her, hands grasping at his hair and tugging his head up as his mouth latches to each of her breasts as she thrusts and thrusts and _thrusts_ -

“So very good,” she blurts, and there’s a spurt of come from his cock against her stomach, and fuck but she’s going out of her mind here with how _good_ it feels, with how he’s looking back up at her with blown eyes and that look on his face like there’s nothing beyond her right now, and her voice is so hoarse she can barely hear it when she opens her mouth and leans down and asks -

“And now I think you’ll be _the very best_ and you’ll come on me, won’t you?”

He screams her name at that and bloody hell but _he does_ , the moment she says it, his cock coating her stomach in come as he sobs her name while he does, and -

She pulls out, moves down and takes him in her mouth just as he keeps on spilling, swallowing as much as she can manage until he’s gone soft, but then - then she just _can’t stop_ and she moves back up on him, throwing the harness out of the way and moving her fingers around his cock and _stroking_ until he’s half hard again and now he’s calling her _madam_ all the time as she keeps on moving her fingers until he’s half-hard again and she’s slid over him - she needs him inside her, she _does_ , and when she’s taken him in at once, of course she did, she was so wet it would have been a surprise if she hadn’t, she takes a moment to look down at him and kiss him again, softer, slower -

“Now,” she pants, moving away, “you’re going to be so very _good_ for me again and come inside me, won’t you?”

“ _Madam_ -”

“Will you?”

“ _Yes_ ,” he shouts, and it doesn’t take much longer for her to ride him until he _does_ , and she screams his name as he spills inside her and then _oh_ she’s going over the edge again, that wave of pleasure taking hold of her so hard she almost faints with it, and she comes around his cock _hard_ and clenches down on him as she does and drags his head upward so she can kiss him properly again and _again_ , and by the time she’s slid off him and trying to catch her breath she feels like she can barely move - still, she unties his wrists before crashing down on the bed, dragging his head on her shoulder as she grasps at his shoulders, and for a while neither of them says a thing as she runs her fingers through his hair and his fingers grasp at her hip.

“What if,” she finally says when she can find her breath, “I want you to call me like that again, when we - are like this?”

“What,” he half-smirks, golden eyes looking up _knowingly_ at her, “ _madam_?”

She shudders at that, and she knows he can feel it.

“Yes,” she says, “what about _that_?”

“I _would_ ,” he agrees softly, barely audible against her skin, “call you like that.”

“Then I think you should,” she says, and he says nothing but presses closer to her and leaves feather-light kisses against her collarbone as her fingers run through his hair until he nods off, curling against her closer.

She _hates_ that she has to leave, she thinks as she grabs him tighter.

She really _hates_ it.

**the axis needs a stronger arm, do you feel your muscles play**

It _had_ been a beautiful day, for once.

( _Same as that fateful August one, but he hopes this one will end up better. He really does._ )

The sun had been up in the sky when they had left Manchester and it stayed there as he rode Roach with Essi in front of him on the nearest _good_ field he could find for it, wind flowing through his hair as she laughed. She had put on her blue Sunday dress - one nicer and made of better materials than her usual one -, which is making him feel… kind of underdressed, but he doesn’t have _nice_ clothing that’s not his uniform and he’d rather not wear it again, and she doesn’t seem to care, so he - tries to ignore it as he helps her down and ties Roach to a tree, that damned ring _burning_ in his pocket at this point, and part of him is saying _ignore it and don’t tell her, don’t spoil it, she could say no and where would that leave you_ , but he thinks he’s done with listening to it - he has since he realized that his mother wasn’t coming back and he’s _tired_.

Also, he had told her he would want to figure things out with her.

He has. She should know.

“Essi?” He asks, just after they sit down on the ground around the tree. “I - I have something to ask you.”

“Of course,” she replies, blue eye staring into his, and he thinks of how well would that blue pearl match _her_ as a whole, and he wraps his fingers around the small box in his pocket as he doesn’t break eye contact.

“I - when you played me _that_ song.”

“Yes?” She prods when he doesn’t go on.

“I told you that I only ever… _said_ it to another person and that I wanted to… figure things out.”

“I remember that,” she smiles back, a hand reaching up to brush a stray lock of hair from his cheek. He’s tempted to turn and kiss the palm, but - not _now_.

“I might have,” he says, taking the box out and opening it in front of her before he can think back on it, and he sees her lips part as she sees the ring nestled inside it, and suddenly he can see _all_ the mistakes he made putting it together and that the pearl _maybe_ still doesn’t look symmetrical from this vantage point, but then he forgets it because she’s looking at him with wet eyes and she’s smiling and -

“Is this - are you asking me -”

He nods, wishing his fingers weren’t damn _trembling_. “I love you,” he blurts, and _now_ it feels freeing, and when he sees her smile wider he can’t help wondering why he didn’t say it before, but - but now it feels _right_ , it does, “and I know I can’t - I mean, you know where I come from and the only reason I could manage _that_ was a stroke of luck or I couldn’t even have gotten it, but - if you’ll have me -”

“Geralt,” she interrupts, holding out her left hand, “I _will_ have you, and I think you should _at least_ slide it on, or should I put on my own ring?”

He shakes his head, _finally_ feeling like there is no weight on his shoulders anymore, and he takes her wrist in his fingers before sliding it on her ring finger, and at least he can say _that_ for himself, the measure was perfect - and under the spring sun it _does_ look quite lovely, all blue and matching _her_ so well, and a moment later her mouth is on his and he’s moaning into it, kissing her back and moving his hands around her waist, and maybe he’s lifted her up without breaking the kiss before he realizes he’s done it, and her arms are around his neck now, and when she moves back she looks _radiant_ , and -

And _hell_ , he wants - he thinks he needs to kiss her again and he wants to move under her skirt and kiss her in between her legs except that they’re in the middle of a damned field and people _do_ pass by here, but from the way she looks at it she’s of the same mind, and -

“I think,” she says, her voice trembling, “that I’ve seen one of those coaching inns on the way. I _do_ have some money with and you have a very nice, _fast_ horse. How about that?”

Oh.

 _Oh_.

“I think we should find it,” he agrees, and lowers her down before getting Roach again and letting her go up first, trying to keep his hands steady.

Turns out, he hadn’t noticed the inn, nervous as he had been, but it was not too far from the field, with a few mail coaches out in the yard, and it’s - affordable and the owner doesn’t look like a complete arse who can’t care for horses, so he lets Essi pay for stabling Roach for the day and for a room upstairs. He takes the key when he’s handed it and when the innkeeper notices the ring and congratulates them he barely even knows how to take it because when was the last time it happened, and so he mutters a half-hearted thank you before they dash upstairs.

The room is admittedly worth the price - it’s small and the wooden floor creaks when they walk inside it, and the bed’s mattress is tough, but at least it looks clean and the moment the door is locked and Essi’s mouth is on his he stops thinking about _that_ \- he does what he’s been wanting to since she said yes and drops on his knees as she raises her skirt, and when he pushes her smallclothes down and he moves his mouth on her cunt she’s _dripping_ , and he groans as he puts his tongue on it, curling it over her clit the way he knows drives her mad, and a moment later she’s bunched up the skirt up to her knees so she can grasp at his hair and push his head _further_ into her cunt, and _fuck_ yes that was exactly what he was hoping she’d do -

She screams his name as he slides his tongue inside her once, twice, before moving it around her clit again, and he _knows_ she’s close when he moves a hand up her thigh and then right _inside_ her as his tongue stays on her clit, bending his fingers so that he finds exactly the place he knows will drive her even madder, and when he _does_ she’s screaming his name all over again as she pours sweet, sweet water all over his face, and he swallows as much as he can as her hands press at the back of his head and the fact that he can _feel_ the ring on her finger is going straight to his cock, and he doesn’t move until she loosens her grip and pushes his head back, looking down at him with flushed cheeks and wet eyes and the face of someone who wants to drag him to the bed and have her way with him at once, and _oh he wants her to_ -

“Get on the bed,” she whispers, and her voice is low but the _tone_ goes right to his cock again.

“Madam,” he says, his voice hoarse, and he hears the sharp intake of breath she let out at _that_ , and - honestly, it just slipped out when he used it for the first time but it felt _right_ , and she had looked at him with eyes that seemed to burn through him when she did, and it’s only been a couple of weeks but he wants to do it _again_ and it still feels right as he says it, and he stands up for a moment before dropping on the bed and moving down with his head on the pillow, letting his hands fall to his sides, waiting for her to decide what to do.

“Good,” she tells him, and _that_ makes his blood boil all over again, and he hadn’t known he had liked it so much until she said it for the first time but now it makes him shudder in the good way every time that word leaves his mouth, and he stares at her as she unlaces her pretty Sunday dress and leaves it on the nearest chair, then slip off her smallclothes, and then she unlaces her corset from the front -

And takes the laces out of it.

 _Fuck_ , he thinks as she crawls on the bed, wearing nothing, her breasts moving right in front of his face as he holds his hands out without her needing to ask.

“ _Very_ good,” she smiles, using those laces to tie his wrists together and moving his bound arms behind his head. “You’re - did I ever tell you that the first time I saw you in that inn I couldn’t take my eyes off you?”

He shakes his head.

“Too bad of me,” she keeps on. “Keep those hands there, _perfect_ ,” and then she’s running her fingers over his chest, and so what if he moans out loud the moment those slender, roughened fingers of hers pull at his pecs and _twist_ a bit?

“God, I love how your voice sounds - I was saying,” she says, sounding like she’s short of breath and maybe so is he, “oh, I just couldn’t, you were the most handsome man I ever saw in my entire life, but I wouldn’t have dared think that -”

“You - really?” He asks - he doesn’t think he’s ever heard anyone describe him like _that_ , and he sounds even more out of breath, and then she leans down and kisses him again as her right hand wraps around his cock and the left cups his face, and _oh_ he can feel that ring on it again, and he has to turn and kiss the back of it, and the noise she makes at _that_ makes his cock twitch in her hand, and _oh_ he’s so hard it would hurt if she wasn’t giving him careful strokes.

“Yes,” she blurts, “ _yes_ , and I’ll - I’ll _always_ have you,” she blurts again, her mouth right over his ear, and he arches into her hand, and -

“Then _take me_ , madam,” he blurts, not even thinking about it for one second, and the sound that leaves her throat at _that_ makes him shudder even more, and then she’s moved back and sunk on his cock again, sliding on it without a hitch, but _fuck_ she was so wet before, of course she did, and she’s _clenching_ around him and she feels warm and tight and exactly _right_ , and then she stares at him and grabs his bound hands and pulls them _behind_ her so his head is in the middle of her chest, pressed against those soft breasts of hers, and when he runs his tongue over the top of the first she moans -

“Good,” she urges him, “ _very_ good, yes, _go on_ ,” and he’s barely managed to take the nipple in between his lips when she rolls her hips and starts riding him slowly but _surely_ , her cunt still warm and wet and _tight_ around him, and then her hands are at the back of his head pressing it _further_ and he knows he won’t last long, he knows, but -

“Hell,” she blurts, “oh, you’re _perfect_ , just so, don’t - try to hold on,” she says as she rolls her hips again, and he can just mutter _yes madam_ against her chest as he tries to keep himself from coming inside her as much as he knows he’s _this close_ , but if he focuses on her other breast maybe he can just do it, and so he runs his tongue along the nipple before sucking on it again, slow, as she keeps on rolling her hips faster and _faster_ , his bound hands pressed on the small of her back as her hair falls in a soft curtain all over his face.

“God,” she whines, “ _god_ yes, you feel so good, you feel so _good_ ,” and that makes him shudder and press closer all over again - he’s trying to fuck into her following her pace but he’s not sure he’s managing it, but that doesn’t matter because she’s still running her hands through his hair and pulling his head up to kiss him again as she moves back up and then lowers herself on his cock again, and now he’s so deep inside her it’s driving him mad -

“Oh,” she urges then, the hand with the ring grasping the back of his head _hard,_ “oh, _do -_ you can, I need you to come in me already, _doitdoitdoit_ ,” and at _that_ he can’t hold back anymore - he lets go and spills inside her so hard he has to close his eyes and it still makes him shiver all over against her as she holds him closer and _clenches_ around him harder and follows him suit, and he can’t stop fucking into her but she’s also not moving at all, her legs trembling as she takes his face in between her hands and kissing him again and again and _again_ , and at that point he can’t even feel his hands and if he’s looking at her he feels like he’s floating into thin hair, only managing to focus on her face as her lips move over his more gently and she lowers him down on the bed with none of the urgency she had showed before. She slides his arms up so she can undo the laces and leave his arms unbound, kissing one wrist first and then the other before sliding off him - he can _smell_ the both of them on each other as she decides to not bother cleaning up and presses up closer to him, her ringed hand cradling his cheek all over again before she kisses him deep and slow and _soft_ , and he’s still feeling like he’s floating but like she’s anchoring him at the same time and just -

When she moves back and just _looks_ at him like she can’t believe her luck, he wishes he could open his mouth and say the same, but he still doesn’t feel like he can quite focus, and so he just closes his eyes and moans in contentment as she tells him that he’s just so _perfect_ for her, she couldn’t want anyone else, and lets himself drift off.

\--

He opens his eyes - he doesn’t know how long later. His head is on Essi’s thigh and the sun is still up in the sky, which means it’s not evening yet and he can’t have slept long, and he feels _good_ , rested in a way he hadn’t in a while, and her right hand is still running through his hair while the fingers of her left are tangled through the ones on his right and she’s smiling down at him and if this is what he wakes up to every day from now on or from - whenever it is they manage to marry, he might start actually believe that his luck has turned the right way. He _might_. Still -

“Hello,” she says, sounding impossibly fond, “welcome back.”

“... How long was I out?” He groans.

“A couple of hours, but I _did_ pay through the entire night, didn’t I?”

He smiles against her thigh. “You did,” he agrees, and then moves up so he can kiss her again, taking his time.

When he moves back, she still looks like she doesn’t regret it at all.

“So,” she says, “should we just go to the church for the permit _if_ they’ll have us, invite your family and the common friend and avoid the spectacle and the likes, or did you have something else in mind?”

“You… don’t have preferences?” He asks.

She shakes her head. “Honestly, no man I was with before you was worth considering for that, and - I wanted to play songs growing up, I always did. I didn’t… imagine my wedding all the time and so on. I don’t.”

That - makes sense. She never discussed that openly, after all. He thinks about it - it’s not like he ever did much, just the mere concept feeling too much even if he _knows_ he did want it. They could just… do it like that and spare everyone the hassle of organizing a feast, but on the other side he kind of wants to do it _right_ , to not treat it like a mundane thing, except that he certainly does _not_ want to go to the nearby parish, he’s never set foot in there and the minister knows it and also knows that he doesn’t care for that _at all_.

Then he decides that damn it, he’s _tired_ of having to do everything in a rush and to always think about how he’ll find enough money to get through the week, and -

“I think I have a preference,” he says.

“I can hear it.”

“So,” he says, “let’s say that both of us set some money apart until… next August or so.”

“I am following,” she nods.

“If we manage, and I think we could if it’s a little every time, we could… rent a few horses and ride to Scotland along with my family _and_ the common friend who at least should play at the reception.”

She grins back. “Are you telling me we should run off to the first place where anyone would marry us with just our word and celebrate _there_ and come back here showing off the license?”

“That’s _exactly_ what I’m saying. Does the madam approve?”

She grins _wider_. “She approves very, _very_ much. But she also thinks she’s not done with you for now. Shall we -”

“ _Yes_ ,” he immediately says before she crashes her mouth against his, moaning in his mouth so _prettily_ like in one of her songs, and as she moves on top of him again and her tongue finds his own again, he knows he’s not regretting a single choice he’s made since he showed up at her house that day.

Not at all.

End.


End file.
